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Lot Essay
These settees are part of a set of six identified by the late Clive Wainwright as being those sold in the 1801 sale at Fonthill House referred to above. All six are known today: a pair were given by descendants of their 1801 purchaser to Trent Church, Yeovil, twenty miles from Fonthill. They were sold by that church at Hy. Duke's, Dorchester, 17 April 2003, for £276,000. The third pair remain in an English private collection for which they were acquired in the 19th century.
ALDERMAN BECKFORD'S FONTHILL HOUSE
When he came of age in 1781, William Beckford inherited his father's magnificent Palladian mansion of Fonthill House, usually now known as Fonthill Splendens, a house 'with lavish and fashionable interiors of the 1760s, furnished with carved and gilded furniture, richly colored damasks, a catholic picture collection and splendid library' (Philip Hewat-Jaboor in Ostergard, ed., op. cit., p. 51). Beckford's father, also William but usually distinguished from his son by being known as Alderman Beckford, bought the Fonthill estate in 1744. Having much altered and aggrandised the house between 1745 and 1753, it suffered a disastrous fire in 1755. Opportunity arose out of tragedy because this fire, and the Alderman's extremely aristocratic marriage in 1756, led to the construction of an even grander new house in a slightly different position. No prominent architect seems to have been involved in its construction, which took fifteen years, but was mostly complete on the Alderman's death in 1770. He left the ten year-old William Beckford as his only legitimate offspring.
The contents with which the Alderman furnished his house in the 1760s were extremely fashionable and of the highest quality. They almost certainly included the magnificent pair of bureau dressing-tables attributed to John Channon, one of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the other was most recently sold from the Steinberg Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 26 May 2000, lot 205. The Alderman was a noted buyer of modern pictures and a survivor of the 1755 fire was Hogarth's series of The Rake's Progress, later bought by Sir John Soane.
Despite the lavishness and elegance of his decoration of Fonthill House, the Alderman was never as deeply involved in collecting and furnishing as was his more cosmopolitan son. Fonthill House was an appropriately grand seat for an intensely ambitious politician, not the treasure house that its successor became. However, the son cannot have been unaffected by his childhood environment and it has been convincingly suggested by Philip Hewat-Jaboor, in Ostergard, ed., op. cit., p. 59, that the younger Beckford's 'recurrent use of luxurious materials - such as the scarlet and crimson velvets chosen for the interiors of Fonthill Abbey, Lansdown Crescent and Lansdown Tower - was surely inspired by the lavish use of these materials by the Alderman. Purporting to despise his father's Dutch and Flemish paintings, Beckford must nonetheless have been stimulated and influenced by the
Alderman's collection'.
WILLIAM BECKFORD'S ALTERATIONS WITH JOHN SOANE
Beckford spent much of the 1780s abroad, initially at least to escape the scandal brought on by his relationship with William Courtenay. On a visit to England in 1786 Beckford commissioned the architect John Soane to undertake a variety of work at Fonthill, including an elaborate state bed with finial derived from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. It has been suggested by Philip Hewat-Jaboor (loc. cit.) and John Hardy (ibid., p. 318, no. 29), that Soane may have designed these settees. There are a number of elements that support this attribution. Not least is that the design of the 'set'ees' strongly suggests the involvement of an architect rather than a cabinet-maker. They are of extremely unusual form which, if not unique, is not known to have been repeated. The design is resolutely architectual, barely compromised by their practical function. However unique the overall design, it contains elements that date it to the late 1780s. In particular, they relate to a pattern for a medallion back hall chair that is crowned with a feathered plume in the fashion popularised at just this time as the badge of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. The medallion back of the chair is designed either to be carved or painted with a laurel-wreathed patera. This was published by A. Hepplewhite and Co. in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788, pl. 14 (E. White, British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 128). The Hepplewhite design places the pattern in the late 1780s, just when Soane was working at Fonthill House, and his own published designs go further to support the attribution. A pattern for a garden seat that Soane had first published in his Designs in Architecture, 1778, pl. I (White, op. cit., p. 143), and which was republished in 1789, has a broad segmental arched back centred by a swagged medallion, a fluted seatrail divided by block-headed tapering legs, all characteristics of these benches.
THE DESIGN
These hall seats are sculpted with the Beckford heron, with its 'bec fort', in low relief on Roman-medallion shields that are incorporated in the hollow-cornered tablets of the seats double chairbacks. As well as being wreathed in triumphal laurels, they are wreathed also by the Venus pearl-strings that enrich their antique hollow borders. The arms incorporate pearled medallions with 'Apollo' sunflowered paterae. Flowered paterae also provide finials, in the Roman altar fashion, for the backs antique-fluted pilasters. The friezes of their hollowed seats are similarly antique fluted and enriched with flowered medallions above the herm-tapered legs. The legs echo the back and arm pilasters, being embellished at top and base with tablets framing three 'nail' bosses in the antique sarcophagus fashion.
THE SOUTHEY FAMILY
When sold in 1994, these benches came from the collection of the late Miss Edmée Southey (b.1896), apparently the last survivor of one branch of the Southey family. The most famous member of the family was the poet Robert Southey (1774-1843), poet laureate from 1813, and brother-in-law and close friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although extremely radical in his youth, in the 1790s even conceiving a socialist utopia in America with Coleridge, he became more conservative with age and wrote for the Tory Quarterly Review from 1809. Although these benches ultimately descended in the family of one of Southey's brothers, he is the most likely member of the family to have bought them in 1801, if they were acquired at that time. There are two reasons for this. The most important is that he was living in Bristol in the summer of 1801 and could have travelled easily to the house sale at Fonthill, about forty miles from Bristol. Having lived in Portugal in 1795-96, he returned there in 1800-01. He returned to Bristol in June 1801 and remained there until he left for a trip to stay with the Coleridges in the Lake District at the end of August. He was therefore perfectly able to travel to Fonthill for the sale on 19-22 August. The second connection is that Southey certainly knew of Beckford, if not personally, from his time in Portugal. In 1834 Southey wrote to his friend and supporter Charles Wynn: 'Beckford I often met in Portugal, in the only way that he was ever met by his own countrymen - in the streets' (J.W. Warter, ed., Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, London, 1856, vol. IV, p. 378). In the same year he wrote to Caroline Bowles, later his second wife: 'I have not seen Beckford's book, but should expect it to be as you describe it. No talents can compensate for that want of moral feeling which is likely to appear in anything he may write. His house near Cintra was only not the most beautiful place I ever saw because there was one within two or three miles which was in some respects better' (E. Dowden, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, Dublin, 1881, p. 309). This last extract at least suggests Southey admired Beckford's taste.
ALDERMAN BECKFORD'S FONTHILL HOUSE
When he came of age in 1781, William Beckford inherited his father's magnificent Palladian mansion of Fonthill House, usually now known as Fonthill Splendens, a house 'with lavish and fashionable interiors of the 1760s, furnished with carved and gilded furniture, richly colored damasks, a catholic picture collection and splendid library' (Philip Hewat-Jaboor in Ostergard, ed., op. cit., p. 51). Beckford's father, also William but usually distinguished from his son by being known as Alderman Beckford, bought the Fonthill estate in 1744. Having much altered and aggrandised the house between 1745 and 1753, it suffered a disastrous fire in 1755. Opportunity arose out of tragedy because this fire, and the Alderman's extremely aristocratic marriage in 1756, led to the construction of an even grander new house in a slightly different position. No prominent architect seems to have been involved in its construction, which took fifteen years, but was mostly complete on the Alderman's death in 1770. He left the ten year-old William Beckford as his only legitimate offspring.
The contents with which the Alderman furnished his house in the 1760s were extremely fashionable and of the highest quality. They almost certainly included the magnificent pair of bureau dressing-tables attributed to John Channon, one of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the other was most recently sold from the Steinberg Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 26 May 2000, lot 205. The Alderman was a noted buyer of modern pictures and a survivor of the 1755 fire was Hogarth's series of The Rake's Progress, later bought by Sir John Soane.
Despite the lavishness and elegance of his decoration of Fonthill House, the Alderman was never as deeply involved in collecting and furnishing as was his more cosmopolitan son. Fonthill House was an appropriately grand seat for an intensely ambitious politician, not the treasure house that its successor became. However, the son cannot have been unaffected by his childhood environment and it has been convincingly suggested by Philip Hewat-Jaboor, in Ostergard, ed., op. cit., p. 59, that the younger Beckford's 'recurrent use of luxurious materials - such as the scarlet and crimson velvets chosen for the interiors of Fonthill Abbey, Lansdown Crescent and Lansdown Tower - was surely inspired by the lavish use of these materials by the Alderman. Purporting to despise his father's Dutch and Flemish paintings, Beckford must nonetheless have been stimulated and influenced by the
Alderman's collection'.
WILLIAM BECKFORD'S ALTERATIONS WITH JOHN SOANE
Beckford spent much of the 1780s abroad, initially at least to escape the scandal brought on by his relationship with William Courtenay. On a visit to England in 1786 Beckford commissioned the architect John Soane to undertake a variety of work at Fonthill, including an elaborate state bed with finial derived from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. It has been suggested by Philip Hewat-Jaboor (loc. cit.) and John Hardy (ibid., p. 318, no. 29), that Soane may have designed these settees. There are a number of elements that support this attribution. Not least is that the design of the 'set'ees' strongly suggests the involvement of an architect rather than a cabinet-maker. They are of extremely unusual form which, if not unique, is not known to have been repeated. The design is resolutely architectual, barely compromised by their practical function. However unique the overall design, it contains elements that date it to the late 1780s. In particular, they relate to a pattern for a medallion back hall chair that is crowned with a feathered plume in the fashion popularised at just this time as the badge of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. The medallion back of the chair is designed either to be carved or painted with a laurel-wreathed patera. This was published by A. Hepplewhite and Co. in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788, pl. 14 (E. White, British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 128). The Hepplewhite design places the pattern in the late 1780s, just when Soane was working at Fonthill House, and his own published designs go further to support the attribution. A pattern for a garden seat that Soane had first published in his Designs in Architecture, 1778, pl. I (White, op. cit., p. 143), and which was republished in 1789, has a broad segmental arched back centred by a swagged medallion, a fluted seatrail divided by block-headed tapering legs, all characteristics of these benches.
THE DESIGN
These hall seats are sculpted with the Beckford heron, with its 'bec fort', in low relief on Roman-medallion shields that are incorporated in the hollow-cornered tablets of the seats double chairbacks. As well as being wreathed in triumphal laurels, they are wreathed also by the Venus pearl-strings that enrich their antique hollow borders. The arms incorporate pearled medallions with 'Apollo' sunflowered paterae. Flowered paterae also provide finials, in the Roman altar fashion, for the backs antique-fluted pilasters. The friezes of their hollowed seats are similarly antique fluted and enriched with flowered medallions above the herm-tapered legs. The legs echo the back and arm pilasters, being embellished at top and base with tablets framing three 'nail' bosses in the antique sarcophagus fashion.
THE SOUTHEY FAMILY
When sold in 1994, these benches came from the collection of the late Miss Edmée Southey (b.1896), apparently the last survivor of one branch of the Southey family. The most famous member of the family was the poet Robert Southey (1774-1843), poet laureate from 1813, and brother-in-law and close friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although extremely radical in his youth, in the 1790s even conceiving a socialist utopia in America with Coleridge, he became more conservative with age and wrote for the Tory Quarterly Review from 1809. Although these benches ultimately descended in the family of one of Southey's brothers, he is the most likely member of the family to have bought them in 1801, if they were acquired at that time. There are two reasons for this. The most important is that he was living in Bristol in the summer of 1801 and could have travelled easily to the house sale at Fonthill, about forty miles from Bristol. Having lived in Portugal in 1795-96, he returned there in 1800-01. He returned to Bristol in June 1801 and remained there until he left for a trip to stay with the Coleridges in the Lake District at the end of August. He was therefore perfectly able to travel to Fonthill for the sale on 19-22 August. The second connection is that Southey certainly knew of Beckford, if not personally, from his time in Portugal. In 1834 Southey wrote to his friend and supporter Charles Wynn: 'Beckford I often met in Portugal, in the only way that he was ever met by his own countrymen - in the streets' (J.W. Warter, ed., Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, London, 1856, vol. IV, p. 378). In the same year he wrote to Caroline Bowles, later his second wife: 'I have not seen Beckford's book, but should expect it to be as you describe it. No talents can compensate for that want of moral feeling which is likely to appear in anything he may write. His house near Cintra was only not the most beautiful place I ever saw because there was one within two or three miles which was in some respects better' (E. Dowden, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, Dublin, 1881, p. 309). This last extract at least suggests Southey admired Beckford's taste.