Lot Essay
This Grecian footstool belongs to the celebrated suite supplied by George Bullock (d. 1818) to Don Pedro de Souza e Holstein, 1st Duke of Palmella (d. 1856) and Portuguese Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Having served under Wellington in the Peninsular War, Palmella was appointed to the Embassy on his return from the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, and it is highly probable that this suite was ordered for the Embassy itself in South Audley Street. Despite his being recalled as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1817, the Duke remained in London until May 1820. Finally expelled from the Embassy to a sleezy hotel in Berkeley Square in 1819, he was invited by the Prince Regent to stay at Brighton Pavilion, remaining a particular friend of William Beckford and, according to the latter, devotee of his daughter the Marchioness of Douglas, later Duchess of Hamilton.
The most sumptuous and extensive single suite by Bullock to have survived, it is tempting to conclude that the Palmella commisssion sprang from the brilliant self-publicity of his St. Helena commission, supplied in 1815 to the defeated Emperor Napoleon for New Longwood House. Of the original suite, three window pelmets, a window seat, a sofa, eighteen dining chairs, a display stand for plate, four torcheres, two pier-glasses, two side cabinets and this footstool survive.
The suite's design reflects the French Grecian style promoted by Bullock following his sojourn in Paris in 1814, expressed in his Hanover Square showrooms and advertised in Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, May 1816. The latter illustrated a similar footstool, accompanying an example of his sofas that were buhle-inlaidin the Grecian style.
This footstool is typical of the eclectic style introduced by cabinet-makers and upholsters such as Bullock in George IV's Regency. While its frame of English golden oak is embellished in the French manner with gilt mounts and inlay, its Gothic support-arches, flower reliefs and wreaths of trefoiled sprigs inlaid in a broad Etruscan black ribbon with reeded borders, unites the old English and the Classical Styles.
A number of such 'buhle' pieces featured in the May 1819 stock dispersed on the premises at 4 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square by James Christie.
The most sumptuous and extensive single suite by Bullock to have survived, it is tempting to conclude that the Palmella commisssion sprang from the brilliant self-publicity of his St. Helena commission, supplied in 1815 to the defeated Emperor Napoleon for New Longwood House. Of the original suite, three window pelmets, a window seat, a sofa, eighteen dining chairs, a display stand for plate, four torcheres, two pier-glasses, two side cabinets and this footstool survive.
The suite's design reflects the French Grecian style promoted by Bullock following his sojourn in Paris in 1814, expressed in his Hanover Square showrooms and advertised in Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, May 1816. The latter illustrated a similar footstool, accompanying an example of his sofas that were buhle-inlaidin the Grecian style.
This footstool is typical of the eclectic style introduced by cabinet-makers and upholsters such as Bullock in George IV's Regency. While its frame of English golden oak is embellished in the French manner with gilt mounts and inlay, its Gothic support-arches, flower reliefs and wreaths of trefoiled sprigs inlaid in a broad Etruscan black ribbon with reeded borders, unites the old English and the Classical Styles.
A number of such 'buhle' pieces featured in the May 1819 stock dispersed on the premises at 4 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square by James Christie.