ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN LINNELL

These elegant chairs, conceived in the French 'cabriolet' manner, are designed in the French/Grecian style associated with the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker John Linnell (d. 1796), author of A New Book of Ornaments, 1760. Antique flutes and palms enrich its sphere-capped arms and taper-pillared legs, while the latter are pedimented by palm-flowered Grecian acroteria that derive from James Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, 1762. The flowered acroteria also feature on a bed designed by John Linnell for Castle Howard, Yorkshire and inspired by a bed that he had made for Osterley Park, Middlesex to a 1779 design by the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792) (H. Hayward and P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, vol. II, figs. 11 and 10). The leg pattern corresponds to that of parlour chairs that were also executed by Linnell for Osterley to a 1767 pattern supplied by Adam; while the sphere-capped arms also feature on the Osterley breakfast-room chairs supplied about 1768. However these chairs particularly relate to a suite of furniture executed for Inverary Castle, Argyllshire, after a Linnell pattern of the early 1780s (ibid., figs. 67, 72, 91).