IN THE MANNER OF WILLIAM HALLETT, CIRCA 1730

This armchair belongs to a suite of seat furniture, with serpentined legs embellished with husk-enriched Venus-shells and terminating in ringed eagle-claws, that corresponds to a walnut suite supplied by William Hallett (d. 1781) of Long Acre in 1735 for the London house of Arthur Ingram, 6th Viscount Irwin (d. 1736) and later removed to Temple Newsam House, Yorkshire. The bill for the Irwin suite was submitted by Hallett in August 1735, the eighteen chairs costing £20 14s 0d, and the two sofas, £4 18s 0d. The suite was sold anonymously, Christie's London, 29 June 1978, lot 19 (C. Gilbert, 'Newly Discovered Furniture by William Hallett', The Connoisseur, December 1964, pp. 224-225). A chair with the same patterned feet was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1898 (R. Edwards, A History of the English Chair, London, 1951, no. 58). A wing armchair with a virtually identical leg to the current lot, possibly supplied to Thomas Vernon, Esq., M.P. (1724-71) for Hanbury Hall, Worcestershire, was sold Christie's, London, 15 April 1999, lot 58.