Lot Essay
The bejewelled Monarch's bust is displayed on a plinth-supported, and richly decorated, hexagonal tabernacle-pedestal with pinnacled arcades. It is designed in the medieval manner and flowered with quatrefoils in lozenged trellis. Lions and unicorns, the supporters of the Royal arms of Great Britain, are perched on its balustraded dome, above King George IV's enamelled shield and sword. The shield and sword are displayed on a bracket and flanked by crown ensigned medallions, flowered with the badges of Scotland and Ireland.
The whole is designed in the 'Old English' or Gothic style that had been promoted by King George IV and praised in Rudolph Ackermann's, Repository of Arts, February, 1827, which stated that "The architecture of the middle ages possess more playfulness in its outline, and richness in its details, than any other style." The style is particularly associated with Augustus Charles Pugin (d.1832) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (d.1852), who were selected to furnish designs for the Royal Apartments at Windsor in 1826, while the latter was employed in 1827 to design plate for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the royal goldsmiths, including a bejewlled and enamelled standing cup and plate for St. George's Chapel, Windsor, (see P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright, Pugin, 1994, figs. 328, 50 and 51). In 1836 he was the author of a pattern book of Designs for Gold and Silversmiths.
Sir Henry Halford Bart (1766-1844) was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and Edinburgh and was elected physician to the Middlesex hospital in 1793, the same year as he was appointed physician extraordinary to King George III. After the Kings death he attended George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria and was president of the College of Physicians from 1820 until his death.
Although a personal friend of George III, Halford is described by J.F. Clarke, Autobiographical Recollections as vain, cringing to superiors and haughty to inferiors. Charges of professional misconduct were also made against him by Clarke, who further claimed that when the coffin of Charles I was opened in 1813, Halford took possession of a portion of the fourth cervical vertebra, which had been cut throught by the axe, and used it as a curiosity at his dinner table.
A related centrepiece depicting King George IV as a Roman Emperor, also by the Royal Goldsmiths Rundell Bridge and Rundell, was sold, by the Trustees of the Conyngham Settlement, Christie's, 19 November 1992, lot 114.
The whole is designed in the 'Old English' or Gothic style that had been promoted by King George IV and praised in Rudolph Ackermann's, Repository of Arts, February, 1827, which stated that "The architecture of the middle ages possess more playfulness in its outline, and richness in its details, than any other style." The style is particularly associated with Augustus Charles Pugin (d.1832) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (d.1852), who were selected to furnish designs for the Royal Apartments at Windsor in 1826, while the latter was employed in 1827 to design plate for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the royal goldsmiths, including a bejewlled and enamelled standing cup and plate for St. George's Chapel, Windsor, (see P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright, Pugin, 1994, figs. 328, 50 and 51). In 1836 he was the author of a pattern book of Designs for Gold and Silversmiths.
Sir Henry Halford Bart (1766-1844) was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and Edinburgh and was elected physician to the Middlesex hospital in 1793, the same year as he was appointed physician extraordinary to King George III. After the Kings death he attended George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria and was president of the College of Physicians from 1820 until his death.
Although a personal friend of George III, Halford is described by J.F. Clarke, Autobiographical Recollections as vain, cringing to superiors and haughty to inferiors. Charges of professional misconduct were also made against him by Clarke, who further claimed that when the coffin of Charles I was opened in 1813, Halford took possession of a portion of the fourth cervical vertebra, which had been cut throught by the axe, and used it as a curiosity at his dinner table.
A related centrepiece depicting King George IV as a Roman Emperor, also by the Royal Goldsmiths Rundell Bridge and Rundell, was sold, by the Trustees of the Conyngham Settlement, Christie's, 19 November 1992, lot 114.