Lot Essay
This commode is designed to a pier-glass and its shape and decoration fits broadly into the 'antique' fashion popularised by Robert Adam with his The Works in Architecture, 1773-1779. The shape and layout of the panels stems ultimately from the commode designed by Adam and executed for Lady Derby's Dressing Room at Derby House by Mayhew and Ince in 1774 (illustrated in H. Roberts, 'The Derby House Commode', The Burlington Magazine, May 1985, pp. 275-283).
Brookshaw's very distinctive interpretation of this immensely popular style relies entirely on his skill as a painter with decoration lightly framed by giltwood mouldings. The bouquets and swags suggest the inspiration of French porcelain-mounted furniture with which Brookshaw might well have been familiar after 1773 when his engraver brother began living in Paris (L. Wood. op. cit., p. 392).
The circular painted panels depicting elegant figures are after paintings or engravings by the Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman R.A. (d.1810). Kauffman's literary sources have been examined in detail with reference to a secretaire-cabinet from Woodhall Park, Hertfordshire, that is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (M. Forbes Adam and M. Mauchline, 'Ut pictura poesis, Angelica Kauffman's literary sources', Apollo, April 1992, pp. 345-348). Two of the painted panels on this commode are of the same subject and certainly from the same source as two on the Philadelphia cabinet. The central panel on this commode depicts Una, a virgin whose name signifies truth, with a guardian lion. Kauffman took this idea from Edmund Spenser's epic The Fairie Queene, 1596, Bk. 1, canto 111, 11.44-7. Brookshaw would have known the image from Thomas Burke's 1783 engraving. The left hand panel depicts a pastoral study of Abra, the faithful shepherdess and favorite concubine of King Solomon. This relates to a painting by Kauffman now in Stuttgart but which again Brookshaw would have known from a 1783 engraving. The inspiration for Kauffman in this case was William Collins' Oriental Eclogues, 1757. The Abra figure appears again on a table attributed to Brookshaw in the Victoria and Albert Museum (W. 349a-1871; illustrated in D. Fitzgerald, Georgian Furniture, London, 1969, pls. 114a and 114b). There is no doubt at all that the symbolism of these images would have been known and of interest to the commissioning patron. Both these panels, and doubtless the third also, are symbolic of the power of love and it is most likely that the commode formed part of an immensely subtle decorative scheme. It is historically interesting that furniture with painted panels after Kauffman was among the first pieces of English furniture of the 18th Century to be collected for its own sake. As early as 1900, T.A. Strange devoted a special section of his book English Furniture Decoration Woodwork and Applied Arts to Kauffman scenes and the engraving of Abra is itself reproduced, ibid, p. 249.
This commode is representative of a tiny group within Brookshaw's work consisting of semi-elliptical commodes decorated with mythological scenes. Among the other pieces in the group the most closely related is one sold Christie's London, 15 July 1948, lot 116, from Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire and illustrated in L. Wood, op. cit., p. 390, fig. 7. Another comparable commode is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery and is illustrated by L. Wood, op. cit, p. 387, fig. 6 and in P. Macquoid, The Leverhulme Art Collections, 1928, vol. III, no. 347, pl. 86.
Brookshaw's very distinctive interpretation of this immensely popular style relies entirely on his skill as a painter with decoration lightly framed by giltwood mouldings. The bouquets and swags suggest the inspiration of French porcelain-mounted furniture with which Brookshaw might well have been familiar after 1773 when his engraver brother began living in Paris (L. Wood. op. cit., p. 392).
The circular painted panels depicting elegant figures are after paintings or engravings by the Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman R.A. (d.1810). Kauffman's literary sources have been examined in detail with reference to a secretaire-cabinet from Woodhall Park, Hertfordshire, that is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (M. Forbes Adam and M. Mauchline, 'Ut pictura poesis, Angelica Kauffman's literary sources', Apollo, April 1992, pp. 345-348). Two of the painted panels on this commode are of the same subject and certainly from the same source as two on the Philadelphia cabinet. The central panel on this commode depicts Una, a virgin whose name signifies truth, with a guardian lion. Kauffman took this idea from Edmund Spenser's epic The Fairie Queene, 1596, Bk. 1, canto 111, 11.44-7. Brookshaw would have known the image from Thomas Burke's 1783 engraving. The left hand panel depicts a pastoral study of Abra, the faithful shepherdess and favorite concubine of King Solomon. This relates to a painting by Kauffman now in Stuttgart but which again Brookshaw would have known from a 1783 engraving. The inspiration for Kauffman in this case was William Collins' Oriental Eclogues, 1757. The Abra figure appears again on a table attributed to Brookshaw in the Victoria and Albert Museum (W. 349a-1871; illustrated in D. Fitzgerald, Georgian Furniture, London, 1969, pls. 114a and 114b). There is no doubt at all that the symbolism of these images would have been known and of interest to the commissioning patron. Both these panels, and doubtless the third also, are symbolic of the power of love and it is most likely that the commode formed part of an immensely subtle decorative scheme. It is historically interesting that furniture with painted panels after Kauffman was among the first pieces of English furniture of the 18th Century to be collected for its own sake. As early as 1900, T.A. Strange devoted a special section of his book English Furniture Decoration Woodwork and Applied Arts to Kauffman scenes and the engraving of Abra is itself reproduced, ibid, p. 249.
This commode is representative of a tiny group within Brookshaw's work consisting of semi-elliptical commodes decorated with mythological scenes. Among the other pieces in the group the most closely related is one sold Christie's London, 15 July 1948, lot 116, from Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire and illustrated in L. Wood, op. cit., p. 390, fig. 7. Another comparable commode is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery and is illustrated by L. Wood, op. cit, p. 387, fig. 6 and in P. Macquoid, The Leverhulme Art Collections, 1928, vol. III, no. 347, pl. 86.