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PROPERTY FROM NANTLYS (LOTS 501-576) Beautifully sited on the west facing slope of the Vale of Clwyd, Nantlys is a robustly Elizabethan styled house designed in the early 1870s by the architect Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807-1880) for Philip Pearson Pennant (d.1910). Philip Pennant had inherited part of the estates of the great Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), whose second wife was coincidentally daughter of Sir Thomas Mostyn, 4th Bt. (d.1758). The need for Philip Pennant to build his own house arose from a complicated inheritance. Thomas Pennant had lived at Downing Hall at Whitford. His grand-daughter married Lord Feilding, heir to the Earl of Denbigh, and after her death he refused to give up Downing to Philip Pennant. Wyatt's design for Nantlys incorporates gables, high chimneys and bows for the main rooms. Very full building accounts survive, which show that the house cost £13,044 to build. Furniture was supplied by Maples in 1874 (for example lot 560) as well as by other firms such as Howard and Sons of Berners Street, London (lot 541). MRS HESTER PIOZZI Philip Pennant's first solution to his lack of a house on his estates was to rent the 18th Century house of Brynbella at Tremeirchion. It was built in 1793-1794 for the celebrated writer Hester Thrale Piozzi (1741-1821). She was née Salusbury and thus related to some of the great families of North Wales. Though the years of her greatest social and literary fame had been spent in London, she returned to Wales in the 1790s with her second husband Gabriel Mario Piozzi (1740-1809). Her marriage in 1784 to an Italian musician had been against the wishes of her friends and family but brought her marital happiness for the first time in her life. After many years of travel they established themselves in North Wales by 1795. Her heir was her husband's nephew, who in due course also adopted the name of Salusbury. By 1862 her nephew's descendant let Brynbella to Philip Pennant. When he built Nantlys in the mid-1870s, only a few miles south along the same west-facing valley slope, he was able to buy some of the late 18th Century furniture from Brynbella. This includes the suite of late 18th Century seat-furniture (lots 520-521) and the dining-chairs (lot 510), all by the Wardour Street chairmaker John Gee (1779-c.1824). Mrs Piozzi is known to have been a client of the long-standing Golden Square partnership of Mayhew and Ince. In 1802 she wrote to Penelope Bennington that she was awaiting 'furniture expected from Mayhew and Inch (sic), to decorate pretty Brynbella' (The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington 1778-1821, 1914). Richard Haslam refers to them supplying a chandelier as well (Country Life, 16 September 1982, p. 799).

AFTER SIR GODFREY KNELLER

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER (1689-1700), HALF-LENGTH, IN A RED VELVET COAT, WEARING THE BREAST STAR OF THE ORDER OF THE BATH, IN A PAINTED OVAL

Details

AFTER SIR GODFREY KNELLER
PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER (1689-1700), HALF-LENGTH, IN A RED VELVET COAT, WEARING THE BREAST STAR OF THE ORDER OF THE BATH, IN A PAINTED OVAL
oil on canvas
30¼ x 25¼ in. (76.8 x 64.1 cm.);
together with a mezzotint of the same picture by J. Smith; and another engraving of William, Duke of Gloucester
three in the lot (3)

Engraved

John Smith, 1691.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This portrait is after the picture in The Royal Collection (O. Millar, Pictures in The Royal Collection, London, I, p.144, no.342, II, fig.142).
William, Duke of Gloucester was the only child of Princess Anne of Denmark, who later became Queen, to survive infancy. His father was Prince George of Denmark.

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