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Lot Essay
Emulating the works by the master limewood carver and Master Carpenter to the King's Works, Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), this carved surround shares many compositional and thematic devices with his known works. Similar garlands by Gibbons, such as those at Belton House, Lincolnshire, or Burghley House, Northamptonshire display Nature's bounty manifested in fruit, vegetables, flowers, fowl and other game (D. Esterly, Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving, London, 1998, figs. 68-71). The virtuoso effect of Gibbon's organic and naturalistic carvings conjured contemporary amazement and praise. Writing between 1762-71, Horace Walpole took up Gibbon's reputation as exemplifying the best of the late Gothic tradition of craftsmanship - There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions of the elements with a free disorder natural to each species (H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, ed. R.N. Wornum, London, 1876, vol.2, p.168).
By 1830, however, a slightly different tone was occasionally taken when works by Gibbons were discussed. The repeated use of flora and fauna in garlands, surrounds and trophies lead the art critic Allan Cunningham, when reworking Walpole's comments for his own history of British Art, to lament: '..unlike that which emboides action and sentiment, [one] is exhausted by a few words - the reader wearies of accounts of dead game, and flowers and garlands, and wished for intercourse with man (A. Cunningham, The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, London, 1829-33, vol. 3, p. 16).
Despite seemingly harsh words, Cunningham did in fact agree with Walpole's high opinion of Gibbons's work, eagerly including the carver as the last great proponent of ecclesiastical interior decoration.
Partly in response to such enthusiasm, the early 19th century saw a revival in Gibbon's style first by Edward Wyatt (d. 1833), the brother of the architect James Wyatt, and then more prodigiously by the less skilled carver and restorer W.G. Rogers (d. 1872). Though much lauded by his contemporaries as the equal to and even superior of Gibbons, Rogers as often as not restored and repaired works by Gibbons often by cannibalizing 17th century carvings and marrying them with his own. A group of similar carvings from Bretton Park attributed to Rogers were sold by Members of the Beaumont Family, Christie's London, 6 July 1990, lots 28-31.
By 1830, however, a slightly different tone was occasionally taken when works by Gibbons were discussed. The repeated use of flora and fauna in garlands, surrounds and trophies lead the art critic Allan Cunningham, when reworking Walpole's comments for his own history of British Art, to lament: '..unlike that which emboides action and sentiment, [one] is exhausted by a few words - the reader wearies of accounts of dead game, and flowers and garlands, and wished for intercourse with man (A. Cunningham, The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, London, 1829-33, vol. 3, p. 16).
Despite seemingly harsh words, Cunningham did in fact agree with Walpole's high opinion of Gibbons's work, eagerly including the carver as the last great proponent of ecclesiastical interior decoration.
Partly in response to such enthusiasm, the early 19th century saw a revival in Gibbon's style first by Edward Wyatt (d. 1833), the brother of the architect James Wyatt, and then more prodigiously by the less skilled carver and restorer W.G. Rogers (d. 1872). Though much lauded by his contemporaries as the equal to and even superior of Gibbons, Rogers as often as not restored and repaired works by Gibbons often by cannibalizing 17th century carvings and marrying them with his own. A group of similar carvings from Bretton Park attributed to Rogers were sold by Members of the Beaumont Family, Christie's London, 6 July 1990, lots 28-31.