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Lot Essay
The 'Roman' marble-topped sideboard-table is designed in the George II fashion, and evokes antiquity's 'Feast of Bacchus'. A 'Venus' shell is displayed in the lambrequined cartouche of the frieze, which is wreathed by a Grecian fretted ribbon-guilloche; while Roman acanthus wraps the serpentined columnar legs that terminate in bacchic lion-paws. Such 'slab table' patterns featured in William Jones' Gentleman or Builder's Companion, 1739, pls. 29 and 32.
This table belongs to a small group of similarly conceived marble-topped 'slab tables', each distinguished by the use of exceptionally fine mahogany crisply carved, with the same distinctive dished apron centred by a Venus shell clasp. Of these, the pair originally at Langley Park, Norfolk are the most distinguished; these were supplied in the 1740s for the dining room window-piers. This Palladian villa of the early 1740s was erected for George Proctor (d.1744), on his return from living in Venice. He employed Matthew Brettingham (d.1769), although the furnishing of the house was eventually completed by Proctor's nephew, Sir William Beauchamp-Proctor, 1st Bt. (1722-1773) (illustrated in situ in O. Brackett, 'Langley Park', Country Life, 2 July 1927, p. 18, fig. 4). The Langley tables relate most closely to the present example, and they share the echinus-moulded cornices, fretted and shell-enriched friezes and torus mouldings with flowered ribbon-guilloches. The Langley Park tables were sold by Sir Christopher Proctor-Beuchamp, Bt., Christie's, London, 6 July 1995, lot 100.
Side tables from this distinctive group include that with almost identically-fretted frieze and shell clasp, sold from Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, Christies, London, 22 May 1967, lot 337; another with plain veneered frieze formerly at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (sold Hollis and Webb, Hickleton Hall sale, 18-22 March 1947, lot 256); another with 'Jupiter' eagle-claw feet, formerly in the collection of The Earl Poulett at Hinton House, Somerset (sold Sotheby's, London, 1 November 1968, lot 52); another, also with plain frieze, formerly in the collection of Sir John Ramsden, Bt., sold Sotheby's, New York, 7 April 2004, lot 175 ($187,200); and the sideboard-tables commisioned for Ham House, Surrey about 1740. The frieze and cartouche, moreover, relate to a table that is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (no. W.4-1965).
This table belongs to a small group of similarly conceived marble-topped 'slab tables', each distinguished by the use of exceptionally fine mahogany crisply carved, with the same distinctive dished apron centred by a Venus shell clasp. Of these, the pair originally at Langley Park, Norfolk are the most distinguished; these were supplied in the 1740s for the dining room window-piers. This Palladian villa of the early 1740s was erected for George Proctor (d.1744), on his return from living in Venice. He employed Matthew Brettingham (d.1769), although the furnishing of the house was eventually completed by Proctor's nephew, Sir William Beauchamp-Proctor, 1st Bt. (1722-1773) (illustrated in situ in O. Brackett, 'Langley Park', Country Life, 2 July 1927, p. 18, fig. 4). The Langley tables relate most closely to the present example, and they share the echinus-moulded cornices, fretted and shell-enriched friezes and torus mouldings with flowered ribbon-guilloches. The Langley Park tables were sold by Sir Christopher Proctor-Beuchamp, Bt., Christie's, London, 6 July 1995, lot 100.
Side tables from this distinctive group include that with almost identically-fretted frieze and shell clasp, sold from Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, Christies, London, 22 May 1967, lot 337; another with plain veneered frieze formerly at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (sold Hollis and Webb, Hickleton Hall sale, 18-22 March 1947, lot 256); another with 'Jupiter' eagle-claw feet, formerly in the collection of The Earl Poulett at Hinton House, Somerset (sold Sotheby's, London, 1 November 1968, lot 52); another, also with plain frieze, formerly in the collection of Sir John Ramsden, Bt., sold Sotheby's, New York, 7 April 2004, lot 175 ($187,200); and the sideboard-tables commisioned for Ham House, Surrey about 1740. The frieze and cartouche, moreover, relate to a table that is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (no. W.4-1965).