These chairs formed part of the celebrated suite of settees and armchairs commissioned by Sir William Lee, 4th Baronet (d.1799) in the early 1760s for his drawing room at Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, which had been designed by the architect Henry Keene (d.1776), Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. Their Louis XV style serpentined frames including details such as the scalloped tops to the seatrail, and their acanthus-scroll ornament relates to 'French Chair' patterns engraved by Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) in 1759 and published in the 1763 edition of his Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, pls. XXII and XXIII; while their outward scrolling arms, which merge with the serpentined crest rail of the settees, appear in plate XXX. The roman acanthus foliage, which accompanies the scallop-shell cartouches, emblematic of the nature goddess, harmonised with that of the room's richly stuccoed cornice, executed by Thomas Roberts of Oxford. While the setees share features in common with those provided by Thomas Chippendale for Dumfries House in 1759, they can also be seen as precursors for the celebrated suite, which he provided for the Arlington Street house of Sir Lawrence Dundas in 1766. (See: C. Gilbert, Thomas Chippendale, 1978, figs 355 and 177