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Lot Essay
This elegant Roman-pedimented writing-cabinet is a masterpiece of Georgian Dublin cabinet-making. It is one of a very small and distinguished group of four cabinets, of which only one other is not in a public collection. The group comprises:
1. A cabinet at Temple Newsam House, Leeds, without earlier provenance and given to that museum in 1940. The doors are unadorned mahogany but serpentined and field-panelled on the inside.
2. One from Castletown, Co. Kildare, which remains there. This is closest to the Castlewellan cabinet and shares the rococo carving on the doors.
3. One from Burton Park, Sussex, and illustrated in Country Life, 18 July 1936, p. 72, with a swan-neck pediment.
The most characteristic Irish features of the group are the asymmetric rococo carvings on the doors of this and the Castletown cabinet, and the archaic seaweed marquetry lunettes over the inner arched doors. The latter decoration is discussed in D. Fitzgerald, 'The Marquetry Decoration of early 18th Century Irish furniture', Irish Arts Review, 1997, pp. 35-42.
ICONOGRAPHY
This Ionic-pilastered cabinet reflects the Augustan age of Vitruvius Britannicus, and the taste for the 'antique' promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (d.1753), who served as George II's Lord Lieutenant and Treasurer of Ireland, and introduced architects such as Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (d.1733) to Ireland.
However, its serpentined and carved enrichments introduce the 'picturesque' manner that was celebrated in the mid-18th Century as 'modern'. The doors, in place of the pier-glasses of an earlier generation of bureau-cabinet, display beautifully figured tablets of mahogany, whose ribbon-frames celebrate 'Peace and Plenty'. They are scalloped and hollowed in the natural manner, while their rustic pilasters are overgrown with Roman acanthus and festooned with fruit and flowers.
A secretaire fall, now missing, was incorporated in the cabinet's beautifully fitted interior, and concealed the 'tabernacle' compartment. The latter recalls the triumph of lyric poetry and displays the nature goddess's scallop-shell badge, antique-fretted amongst Roman foliage and inlaid in the golden tympanum of its Doric-pillared arch.
THE PROVENANCE
This cabinet was supplied to William Annesley, 1st Viscount Glerawly (d. 1770) for Castlewellan, County Down. Although the family had bought the estate in 1741, for almost a century they were content with either The Grange, a pleasant group of 18th Century farm and stable buildings around three courtyards, or with Castlewellan Cottage, a single-storey Georgian house with projecting wings and a Venetian doorway, the probable home of this cabinet. The Victorian house at Castlewellan was built in 1856-8 to the designs of William Burn, one of the leading English castle-builders of the period. Mrs Delany was a near neighbour of the William Annesleys, when her husband attended to his duties as Dean of Down, and she commented that they did not spend their time 'enjoying their fortune', perhaps a reference to their lack of building at Castlewellan.
The cabinet is shown in situ in a photograph of the study at Castlewellan, with the 5th Earl Annesley (d. 1908) at his desk, taken by Mr. Armstrong, 10 September 1895 (Private Collection).
1. A cabinet at Temple Newsam House, Leeds, without earlier provenance and given to that museum in 1940. The doors are unadorned mahogany but serpentined and field-panelled on the inside.
2. One from Castletown, Co. Kildare, which remains there. This is closest to the Castlewellan cabinet and shares the rococo carving on the doors.
3. One from Burton Park, Sussex, and illustrated in Country Life, 18 July 1936, p. 72, with a swan-neck pediment.
The most characteristic Irish features of the group are the asymmetric rococo carvings on the doors of this and the Castletown cabinet, and the archaic seaweed marquetry lunettes over the inner arched doors. The latter decoration is discussed in D. Fitzgerald, 'The Marquetry Decoration of early 18th Century Irish furniture', Irish Arts Review, 1997, pp. 35-42.
ICONOGRAPHY
This Ionic-pilastered cabinet reflects the Augustan age of Vitruvius Britannicus, and the taste for the 'antique' promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (d.1753), who served as George II's Lord Lieutenant and Treasurer of Ireland, and introduced architects such as Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (d.1733) to Ireland.
However, its serpentined and carved enrichments introduce the 'picturesque' manner that was celebrated in the mid-18th Century as 'modern'. The doors, in place of the pier-glasses of an earlier generation of bureau-cabinet, display beautifully figured tablets of mahogany, whose ribbon-frames celebrate 'Peace and Plenty'. They are scalloped and hollowed in the natural manner, while their rustic pilasters are overgrown with Roman acanthus and festooned with fruit and flowers.
A secretaire fall, now missing, was incorporated in the cabinet's beautifully fitted interior, and concealed the 'tabernacle' compartment. The latter recalls the triumph of lyric poetry and displays the nature goddess's scallop-shell badge, antique-fretted amongst Roman foliage and inlaid in the golden tympanum of its Doric-pillared arch.
THE PROVENANCE
This cabinet was supplied to William Annesley, 1st Viscount Glerawly (d. 1770) for Castlewellan, County Down. Although the family had bought the estate in 1741, for almost a century they were content with either The Grange, a pleasant group of 18th Century farm and stable buildings around three courtyards, or with Castlewellan Cottage, a single-storey Georgian house with projecting wings and a Venetian doorway, the probable home of this cabinet. The Victorian house at Castlewellan was built in 1856-8 to the designs of William Burn, one of the leading English castle-builders of the period. Mrs Delany was a near neighbour of the William Annesleys, when her husband attended to his duties as Dean of Down, and she commented that they did not spend their time 'enjoying their fortune', perhaps a reference to their lack of building at Castlewellan.
The cabinet is shown in situ in a photograph of the study at Castlewellan, with the 5th Earl Annesley (d. 1908) at his desk, taken by Mr. Armstrong, 10 September 1895 (Private Collection).