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A COLLECTION OF 18th CENTURY CHIMNEY-PIECE DESIGNS Lots 31-43 Inigo Jones (d.1652) established the 17th Century Roman style of chimney-piece architecture by bringing exterior temple ornament across the British threshold to serve as the focal point of a room. This robust antique style was revived in the early 18th Century under the direction of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and his protégé the Rome-trained artist/architect William Kent (d.1748), whose work was popularised by John Vardy's 1744 publication of, Some Designs of Mr Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent. By then the fashion was being challenged by a variety of other styles such as the French 'picturesque', illustrated by Lord Chesterfield's architect Isaac Ware in, A Complete Body of Architecture Improved, 1741, which was reissued as Gothic Architecture, in 1747. The contemporary enthusiasm for novelty and variety was to fuse these three styles with that of the Indian/Chinese to create the whimsical George II 'Modern' style illustrated in Thomas Chippendale's, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754. The later 1750s saw the invention of a lighter and more graceful style of 'antique' with the establishment in London of the Rome-trained architects James 'Athenian' Stuart (d.1788), Sir William Chambers (d.1796) and Robert 'Bob the Roman' Adam (d.1792). Adam, granted together with Chambers a court appointment by George III, was to boast of having revolutionised interior decoration The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1773. The brothers' Adamite or Adelphic style, inspired both by Roman and Renaissance interior decoration, did indeed introduce a harmony of composition, so that the frieze of a chimney-piece often correspoded to that of the room's wall-cornice, its door entablatures and even its furnishings. The hearth formed a particular point of attention in the more stately 18th Century apartments, where all the furniture stood ranged round the walls. It merited particular attention in its design by architects, sculptors, designers, carvers and others, and this in turn helped boost the Nation's Cardinal Art of Sculpture. Executed in wood, stone or marble, the chimney-piece would be one of the first of the interior elements of design to be completed. The finished chimney-piece, sculpted and carved by skilled craftsmen, was a beautiful and complex work of art and the presentation drawings made by the architcet designers for their client's approval equally so. The present group of drawings of chimney-pieces includes work by William Kent (1685-1748), Sir Robert Taylor (1714-1788), Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), James 'Athenian' Stuart (1723-1788), Joseph Wilton (1722-1803) and Robert Adam (1728-1792). We are grateful to Richard Garnier, John Harris and Charles Hind for their help in preparing the following catalogue entries. The cataloguing of architectural drawings is slightly different to those by other artists: it is accepted practice to catalogue both finished drawings by office draughtsmen under the supervision of an architect and unfinished working drawings by an architect, as their autograph work; with design the importance of the work is in the conception.

William Kent (1685-1748)

Design for a chimney-piece for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (d.1748) for Holkham Hall, Norfolk

Details

William Kent (1685-1748)
Design for a chimney-piece for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (d.1748) for Holkham Hall, Norfolk
inscribed with measurements
black and brown ink, brown wash, watermark PRO PATRIA and GR beneath a Crown, on two sheets of joined paper, within the artist's ink-line border, unframed
12 1/8 x 10 1/8 in. (30.7 x 25.7 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 13 December 1988, lot 3.

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Lot Essay

The George II design for an acanthus-flowered chimney-piece, with hermed and antique-fluted pilasters, reflects the Roman fashion promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, and was invented about 1738 by the Rome-trained artist/architect William Kent (d.1748) for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (d.1759) for Holkham Hall, Norfolk. A design by Kent for this chimneypiece also includes a 'continued' Roman temple-pedimented picture-frame enclosing a Roman landscape painting (C. Hussey, English Country Houses 1715-1760, 1955, p. 145). The chimneypiece was executed in marble by Joseph Pickford (d.1761) for Lady Leicester's apartment in the 'Family Wing' pavilion of Lord Leicester's magnificent Roman-style mansion (C. Hiskey, 'The Building of Holkham Hall', Architectural History, 40, 1997, p. 157). The 'Statuary Marble Chimney-Piece' in Lady Leicester's Dressing-Room' was noted as being 'executed from Designs of Mr Kent' in Matthew Brettingham's, Plans of Holkham, 1761 (pl. 47).
Kent's 'continued' chimney-piece design was partly indebted to a design by Inigo Jones (d.1652); while its acanthus flower motif had featured on a chimney-piece that Kent had previously designed for Lord Burlington's Chiswick villa (J. Vardy, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744, 11 and 35.)

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