拍品专文
These serpentined chairs with removable'a chassis' frames, relating to French 'easy chair' patterns illustrated in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Makers Directors, 1754-63, were commissioned about 1760 by John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer (d. 1783) for his London mansion in St. James's. They formed part of a large suite of seat furniture, originally painted white with gilt enrichments in the French manner, and were supplied for two of the state apartments on the piano nobile, that comprised a Great Saloon and its adjoining withdrawing-room, known as Lady Spencer's Dressing-Room. While the Palladian mansion had been built by John Vardy (d. 1765), architect to King George II's Board of Works, these rooms were decorated in the Grecian or antique manner by the architect James Stuart (d. 1793), partly under the guidance of the Society of Dilettanti, a group of connoisseurs/antiquarians who were also assisting Stuart with his publication of Grecian monuments entitled The Antiquities of Athens, 1762. Stuart, whose proposals for the furnishings of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire in the late 1750s had demonstrated his interest in chair design, is likely to have directed the design of these chairs, whose fluted rails and Grecian palmettes correspond to the rooms' architecture (L. Harris, Robert Adam and Kedleston, London, 1987, pp. 26 and 27). The pearl-framed palmettes can also be related to the ornament of Lord Spencer's remarkable suite of seat furniture that was supplied for the Palm Room or ground-floor withdrawing-room, decorated with palm-wrapped columns and furnishings designed by Vardy (J. Friedman, op. cit., fig. 87).
The chairs were originally upholstered with green acanthus-patterned damask, corresponding to the wall-hangings put up in the rooms about 1764, and Roman-acanthus also provides ornament for the chair-frames, where it wraps the arms and husk-enriched backs, while its buds are displayed in the crest-rails' central cartouches. Of the original suite, comprising four sofas, twenty-six armchairs and sixteen chairs, the majority remains at Althorp House, Northamptonshire, together with another set of the same pattern comprising nine open armchairs, eight stools and a settee, all carved in mahogany.
The chairs are likely to have been executed by the carver and chairmaker John Gordon (d. 1777) of St. James's, who may well be the 'Mr Gordon upholder....to Sir William Chambers' listed as a subscriber to Chamber's Treatise on Civil Architecture, 1759. Moreover, they almost certainly reflect his association with William Gordon, who was a subscriber to Chippendales Director in 1754. Surviving documents show that the firm of Gordon and Taitt, with whom John Gordon formed a partnership in 1767, was supplying furniture and carrying out repairs for the Spencers by 1772, including the 'repairing and gilding' of the hall lantern at Spencer House and the making of 'loose covers' for Stuart's Painted Room suite. Although no documentary evidence survives for this suite, the theory of a longstanding relationship between Gordon and Earl Spencer's steward, Thomas Townsend, suggested by such comprehensive repairs, is confirmed by the appointment of the latter as Gordon's executor. Finally, the documented Gordon Furniture supplied to the 2nd Duke of Atholl for Blair Castle in 1748 provides close stylistic affinities with the Spencer House suites (P. Thornton and J. Hardy, op. cit., p. 448). It is the combination of these factors that allows for the confident attribution of the suite to the Gordon workshops.
In discussing Stuart's interior decoration, the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792) acknowledged 'Mr Stuart with his usual elegance and taste has contributed greatly towards introducing the true style of antique decoration' (R.and J. Adams, The Works in Architecture, 1773). Arthur Young, writing of Lord Spencer's house, noted - 'The hangings, carpets, glasses, sofas, chairs, tables, slabs - everything are not only astonishingly beautiful, but contain a vast variety. The carving and gilding is unrivalled. The taste in which every article throughout the whole house is executed is just and elegant'.
A pair from this set is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (nos. W.51 & A. 1984).
The chairs were originally upholstered with green acanthus-patterned damask, corresponding to the wall-hangings put up in the rooms about 1764, and Roman-acanthus also provides ornament for the chair-frames, where it wraps the arms and husk-enriched backs, while its buds are displayed in the crest-rails' central cartouches. Of the original suite, comprising four sofas, twenty-six armchairs and sixteen chairs, the majority remains at Althorp House, Northamptonshire, together with another set of the same pattern comprising nine open armchairs, eight stools and a settee, all carved in mahogany.
The chairs are likely to have been executed by the carver and chairmaker John Gordon (d. 1777) of St. James's, who may well be the 'Mr Gordon upholder....to Sir William Chambers' listed as a subscriber to Chamber's Treatise on Civil Architecture, 1759. Moreover, they almost certainly reflect his association with William Gordon, who was a subscriber to Chippendales Director in 1754. Surviving documents show that the firm of Gordon and Taitt, with whom John Gordon formed a partnership in 1767, was supplying furniture and carrying out repairs for the Spencers by 1772, including the 'repairing and gilding' of the hall lantern at Spencer House and the making of 'loose covers' for Stuart's Painted Room suite. Although no documentary evidence survives for this suite, the theory of a longstanding relationship between Gordon and Earl Spencer's steward, Thomas Townsend, suggested by such comprehensive repairs, is confirmed by the appointment of the latter as Gordon's executor. Finally, the documented Gordon Furniture supplied to the 2nd Duke of Atholl for Blair Castle in 1748 provides close stylistic affinities with the Spencer House suites (P. Thornton and J. Hardy, op. cit., p. 448). It is the combination of these factors that allows for the confident attribution of the suite to the Gordon workshops.
In discussing Stuart's interior decoration, the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792) acknowledged 'Mr Stuart with his usual elegance and taste has contributed greatly towards introducing the true style of antique decoration' (R.and J. Adams, The Works in Architecture, 1773). Arthur Young, writing of Lord Spencer's house, noted - 'The hangings, carpets, glasses, sofas, chairs, tables, slabs - everything are not only astonishingly beautiful, but contain a vast variety. The carving and gilding is unrivalled. The taste in which every article throughout the whole house is executed is just and elegant'.
A pair from this set is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (nos. W.51 & A. 1984).