These chairs are designed in a manner evolved from the 17th Century 'back-stool' of sgabello form with X-trestle supports, such as those supplied for the banqueting hall at Ham House, Surrey, by the eminent King Street cabinet-maker George Nix (d.1751), who was working there between 1729-34 (see: P. Thornton, 'Ham House', Furniture History, 1980, fig. 152). The seat-rail and serpentined back with scalloped or hollowed cresting are banded by a French-style flowered ribbon-twist guilloche moulding en suite with pier tables, which appear to be from the same room (see lot 100 in this sale). A suite of chairs and sofa with corresponding voluted arms, gadroon-edged back seat-rail and acanthus-enriched X-trestle supports, were commissioned for Ham House in the 1740s and may also have been supplied by Nix.
The aggrandisement of Langley in the 1740s was carried out for George Proctor (d.1744) under the direction of the architect Matthew Brettingham (d.1769), who at that time was erecting Holkham Hall, Norfolk, largely to the designs of William Kent (d.1748), and for which Nix also supplied furniture (Thornton, op. cit., p. 649).
The general form of the back features on a chair in the 1740s trade-card of Landall and Gordon and, with the voluted arm, corresponds to an armchair of the period that is attributed to John Channon (d. circa 1783; see: C. Gilbert, John Channon, London, 1993, figs. 173 and 12)