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Lot Essay
These settees (sold for £60,900 at Christie's in 1998) formed part of a suite of seat-furniture that is likely to have been comissioned around 1800 for Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire, by William, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam (d.1833), who inherited the estate in 1782.
A settee and a chair en suite are illustrated in situ in Country Life, loc. cit.. The form of the chair, with scrolled back and forward scrolling front legs enriched with reeds and antique flutes relates to patterns for drawing room chairs published in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary, 1803. A caned chair, of a similar form and with tablet-enriched rails, forming part of a suite formerly at Brabourne Manor, Kent, bears the stamp of the cabinet-maker B. Harmer, who was working in London around 1800 (C. Gilbert and G. Beard, eds., The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, p. 33 and fig. 478).
A settee and a chair en suite are illustrated in situ in Country Life, loc. cit.. The form of the chair, with scrolled back and forward scrolling front legs enriched with reeds and antique flutes relates to patterns for drawing room chairs published in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary, 1803. A caned chair, of a similar form and with tablet-enriched rails, forming part of a suite formerly at Brabourne Manor, Kent, bears the stamp of the cabinet-maker B. Harmer, who was working in London around 1800 (C. Gilbert and G. Beard, eds., The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, p. 33 and fig. 478).