拍品專文
The serpentined and mirror-framed 'landscape' overmantel-glass is designed in the George II picturesque/Chinese style introduced by Pierre-Edme Babel (d.1770), the French designer, modeller of Long Acre and author of A New Book of Ornaments for Glasses, Tables and Sconces with Trophies in the Chinese Way, 1752 and A New Book of China Ornaments, 1753, and later popularised by Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman's and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754 (see M. S. Nodin, Rococo Art and Design in Hogarth's England, 1984 p.168 no.L22). The acanthus and ribbon-scrolled border which supports a fret-railed Chinese bridge spanning the watery-glass and a rocky cascade, and its acanthus-plumed and pagoda-roofed 'ting' provide a bracket for a Chinese porcelain figure. It relates to the celebrated overmantels manufactured by Messrs William and John Linnell of Berkeley Square in the early 1750's for the Chinese apartment at Badminton House, Gloucestershire and corresponds to elements in some of his surviving mirror designs, (see P. Macquoid Age of Satinwood, London, 1908, figs.8 and 9; and H. Hayward, 'Drawings of John Linnell, in the Victoria & Albert Museum', Furniture History, 1969, figs 48, 75 and 140). Like those in the Badminton apartment, this mirror is likely to have at one time furnished the room in Hamilton's New Wing, which was high with Chinese wall-paper (see Country Life 14, August 1975, p.391 fig.4)