拍品專文
These exotic parlour chairs are richly coloured in the Etruscan style introduced in 1771 by the architect James Wyatt (d.1813) at Fawley Court, Buckinghamshire.
Their hermed legs and looped backs with acanthus-tipped ribbons entwining painted bas-relief medallions also correspond to the elegant furniture style that Wyatt introduced at this period. It is probable that this back design developed from a 1766 reprint by the printseller Robert Sayer of a chair pattern with voluted-scroll uprights that appeared in Six New Designs of Chairs of 1753 (see: C. Gilbert, 'Smith, Manwaring, Sayer and a newly discovered set of designs', Furniture History, 1993, pp. 129-133). The elliptical medallions, whose pea-green background was highly fashionable for dining-rooms at the period, depict festive bacchic-masks between satyr-headed tripods and krater wine-vases protected by sphinxes, which were then considered as Etruscan chimera. Decorative work of this quality would have been entrusted to a specialist artist, such as Biagio Rebecca (d. 1808), who is thought to have collaborated with Wyatt on the embellishment of Sambroke Freeman's 'Etruscan' temple at Fawley Court. This banqueting-pavilion is on an island in the Thames below Henley and it contains medallion-decorated walls (E. Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England, London, 1970, vol. II, p. 261). In view of this suite of chairs' style and richness of decoration, there is a possiblity that it was designed for Fawley by Wyatt, whose related furniture designs are discussed by F.D. Fergusson, 'Wyatt Chairs', Burlington Magazine, July 1977, pp. 493-496
Their hermed legs and looped backs with acanthus-tipped ribbons entwining painted bas-relief medallions also correspond to the elegant furniture style that Wyatt introduced at this period. It is probable that this back design developed from a 1766 reprint by the printseller Robert Sayer of a chair pattern with voluted-scroll uprights that appeared in Six New Designs of Chairs of 1753 (see: C. Gilbert, 'Smith, Manwaring, Sayer and a newly discovered set of designs', Furniture History, 1993, pp. 129-133). The elliptical medallions, whose pea-green background was highly fashionable for dining-rooms at the period, depict festive bacchic-masks between satyr-headed tripods and krater wine-vases protected by sphinxes, which were then considered as Etruscan chimera. Decorative work of this quality would have been entrusted to a specialist artist, such as Biagio Rebecca (d. 1808), who is thought to have collaborated with Wyatt on the embellishment of Sambroke Freeman's 'Etruscan' temple at Fawley Court. This banqueting-pavilion is on an island in the Thames below Henley and it contains medallion-decorated walls (E. Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England, London, 1970, vol. II, p. 261). In view of this suite of chairs' style and richness of decoration, there is a possiblity that it was designed for Fawley by Wyatt, whose related furniture designs are discussed by F.D. Fergusson, 'Wyatt Chairs', Burlington Magazine, July 1977, pp. 493-496