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Lot Essay
This pedestal-corniced cabinet possibly formed part of a set of ten originally commissioned by King George III in the early 1760s as part of the refurnishing of Queen Charlotte's Gallery at Kensington Palace. These pier cabinets would have been designed under the direction of Sir William Chambers (d.1796), architect of the Royal Board of Works, and harmonized with the Queen's china cabinet which provided the room's focal point on the principal wall. The china cabinet, whose pediment was surmounted by a balustraded gallery for porcelain display, had originally housed Queen Caroline's mechanical organ, and appears to have been designed in the 1730s under the direction of William Kent (d. 1749), surveyor of King George II's Board of Works. As its Roman temple facade was festively flowered with garlands hung from bacchic lion masks, this cabinet and the Royal set are richly flowered and festooned with the Roman acanthus, and is supported by bacchic lion paws emerging from foliate brackets.
In 1763, William Vile (d. 1767), cabinetmaker to King George III, was paid 57 for transforming the organ-case into a china-cabinet, including the addition of bacchic vines and laurel-garlands to its 'commode' base, and it seems likely that he also supplied cabinets for the window-piers at this time, nine of which remain in the Royal Collection. They are illustrated in situ in James Stephanoff's watercolor of the gallery executed in 1819 and featured in W.H. Pyne's Royal Residences, 1817-1820, pl. 67, at which point there were still ten in the Royal Collection.
Traditionally these cabinets have been thought to house organ rolls, although during Queen Victoria's reign they served as wardrobes. Queen Mary had the cabinets restored, presumably removing any hanging fitments. Like so much of Vile's Royal furniture, the set of nine in the Royal Collection has had a complicated history of alterations and restorations (G. Beard, 'Vile and Cobb, Eighteenth Century London Furniture Makers', Antiques, June 1990, pp. 1394-1404). The deeply scrolling acanthus carving to the doors of the cabinets in the Royal Collection have variations, both in detail and depth, as do the measurements of the cabinets which can possibly be explained by the delivery of the cabinets over a period of time. Furthermore, the plugged holes on the doors of this cabinet, for which no satisfactory explanation has been found, also feature on some of the cabinets in the Royal collection.
The fact that there is one missing cabinet from the original set supplied to Kensington Palace, supported by the absence of any other known examples of this form (aside from this cabinet) coupled with a complicated history of modifications to this cabinet and the Royal examples, lend credence to the argument that this cabinet may very well be the missing tenth cabinet from the Royal set. Certainly, if this cabinet is indeed the missing tenth cabinet, it would have left the Royal Collection prior to 1866 when the Collection was inventoried and comprehensively branded.
In 1763, William Vile (d. 1767), cabinetmaker to King George III, was paid 57 for transforming the organ-case into a china-cabinet, including the addition of bacchic vines and laurel-garlands to its 'commode' base, and it seems likely that he also supplied cabinets for the window-piers at this time, nine of which remain in the Royal Collection. They are illustrated in situ in James Stephanoff's watercolor of the gallery executed in 1819 and featured in W.H. Pyne's Royal Residences, 1817-1820, pl. 67, at which point there were still ten in the Royal Collection.
Traditionally these cabinets have been thought to house organ rolls, although during Queen Victoria's reign they served as wardrobes. Queen Mary had the cabinets restored, presumably removing any hanging fitments. Like so much of Vile's Royal furniture, the set of nine in the Royal Collection has had a complicated history of alterations and restorations (G. Beard, 'Vile and Cobb, Eighteenth Century London Furniture Makers', Antiques, June 1990, pp. 1394-1404). The deeply scrolling acanthus carving to the doors of the cabinets in the Royal Collection have variations, both in detail and depth, as do the measurements of the cabinets which can possibly be explained by the delivery of the cabinets over a period of time. Furthermore, the plugged holes on the doors of this cabinet, for which no satisfactory explanation has been found, also feature on some of the cabinets in the Royal collection.
The fact that there is one missing cabinet from the original set supplied to Kensington Palace, supported by the absence of any other known examples of this form (aside from this cabinet) coupled with a complicated history of modifications to this cabinet and the Royal examples, lend credence to the argument that this cabinet may very well be the missing tenth cabinet from the Royal set. Certainly, if this cabinet is indeed the missing tenth cabinet, it would have left the Royal Collection prior to 1866 when the Collection was inventoried and comprehensively branded.