Lot Essay
These chairs correspond to a drawing by the architect, James Wyatt (d.1813) now in the collection of Vicomte de Noailles, Paris (see F.D. Fergusson, 'Wyatt Chairs: Rethinking the Adam Heritage', Burlington Magazine, July 1977, fig. 33). This chair pattern is thought to have been invented for John Baker Holroyd, later created Earl of Sheffield (d.1821) for the dining-room that Wyatt designed at Sheffield Park, Sussex in the late 1770's. Such looped upright backs also feature on related 'Etruscan' parlour chairs which Wyatt designed in this period for Sir Charles Sedley's temple at Villa Nuthall, Nottinghamshire.
These chairs may have originally belonged with a suite of fifteen reputedly from Lord Stanley of Alderley which were sold by Christie's London, 19 November 1970, lot 124 and are now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Another set of this design belong to Lord Hesketh at Easton Neston, Northamptonshire and are illustrated in M. Jourdain, English Interior Decoration 1500-1830, 1950, pl. 82. Two of the same model appear in an advertisement by J.W. Needhams, Manchester, in The Connoisseur, January 1920, p.xxx.
The interlaced-ribbon back entwining a 'Palmyreen-sunflower and palmette' splat derives from the ornament on chairs designed in the mid-1760's by Robert Adam (d.1792) for the 4th Earl of Coventry and executed by John Cobb (d.1778), cabinetmaker to George III. The form of the back also relates to a pattern issued by the printseller Robert Sayer in his Six Designs of Chairs of 1753 and reissued 1766 (see C.Gilbert, 'Smith Manwaring, Sayer and a Newly Discovered Set of Designs', F.H.S.J., 1993, pp. 129-133).
These chairs may have originally belonged with a suite of fifteen reputedly from Lord Stanley of Alderley which were sold by Christie's London, 19 November 1970, lot 124 and are now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Another set of this design belong to Lord Hesketh at Easton Neston, Northamptonshire and are illustrated in M. Jourdain, English Interior Decoration 1500-1830, 1950, pl. 82. Two of the same model appear in an advertisement by J.W. Needhams, Manchester, in The Connoisseur, January 1920, p.xxx.
The interlaced-ribbon back entwining a 'Palmyreen-sunflower and palmette' splat derives from the ornament on chairs designed in the mid-1760's by Robert Adam (d.1792) for the 4th Earl of Coventry and executed by John Cobb (d.1778), cabinetmaker to George III. The form of the back also relates to a pattern issued by the printseller Robert Sayer in his Six Designs of Chairs of 1753 and reissued 1766 (see C.Gilbert, 'Smith Manwaring, Sayer and a Newly Discovered Set of Designs', F.H.S.J., 1993, pp. 129-133).