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拍品專文
These triumphal-arched and richly filigreed George I chairs were almost certainly commissioned by Sir William Bateman, later 1st Viscount Batemen and Baron Culmore (d. 1744) of Shobdon Court, Herefordshire and Totteridge, Hertfordshire around the time of his marriage in 1720 to Lady Anne Spencer, daughter of Lord Sunderland of Althorp, Northamptonshire. Sir William had succeeded two years previously to the Herefordshire estates of his father, who had served as London's Lord Mayor and whose classical villa of 'Shobdon' had recently featured in C. Campbell's, Vitruvius Britannicus (1717).
The chairs, with Roman columnar and truss-scrolled legs banded by flutes and reeds and terminating in tablet feet, correspond in style to the celebrated golden marriage-chest bearing William and Anne's love-knotted cypher embossed on a shell-decked Roman sarcophagus. The latter, which derived, from an engraving of a Louis Quatorze 'cassone' invented by Jean Berain, is thought to have been supplied by the court cabinet-maker James Moore (d. 1726) of Nottingham Court, but was probably designed by his son James Moore the Younger (d. 1734) (C. Wilk ed.,Western Furniture in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1996 pp. 86 and 87). Since the Moores had recently been chosen in place of the architect Sir John Vanburgh to design the furnishings for the magnificent Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, it is likely that they too designed these Bateman chairs, with their legs filigreed in tablets of golden acanthus foliage festooned with 'Apollo' laurels and enriched with 'Venus' shell-scallops and pearls. The chairs, which may have been upholstered around 1900 in their present Italian cut velvet feature in situ beside the Bateman chest in a photograph of 1906.
This pair was included in the set of six side chairs sold in the 1926 sale as lot 81, when bought by Frank Partridge. The famous gilt-gesso 'Bateman' chest was sold as lot 84 [also bought by Frank Partridge].
The chairs, with Roman columnar and truss-scrolled legs banded by flutes and reeds and terminating in tablet feet, correspond in style to the celebrated golden marriage-chest bearing William and Anne's love-knotted cypher embossed on a shell-decked Roman sarcophagus. The latter, which derived, from an engraving of a Louis Quatorze 'cassone' invented by Jean Berain, is thought to have been supplied by the court cabinet-maker James Moore (d. 1726) of Nottingham Court, but was probably designed by his son James Moore the Younger (d. 1734) (C. Wilk ed.,Western Furniture in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1996 pp. 86 and 87). Since the Moores had recently been chosen in place of the architect Sir John Vanburgh to design the furnishings for the magnificent Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, it is likely that they too designed these Bateman chairs, with their legs filigreed in tablets of golden acanthus foliage festooned with 'Apollo' laurels and enriched with 'Venus' shell-scallops and pearls. The chairs, which may have been upholstered around 1900 in their present Italian cut velvet feature in situ beside the Bateman chest in a photograph of 1906.
This pair was included in the set of six side chairs sold in the 1926 sale as lot 81, when bought by Frank Partridge. The famous gilt-gesso 'Bateman' chest was sold as lot 84 [also bought by Frank Partridge].