Lot Essay
These dolphins once adorned the Sutton Place apartment of Marietta Tree, whose gracious personality and civic accomplishments were celebrated by New York society. In 1946, she married her second husband, Ronald Tree, who had purchased one of England's greatest country houses, Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, furnishing it with his first wife, Nancy Lancaster, an influential force in country house design and partner with John Fowler at Colefax and Fowler. These dolphins may have formed part of the interiors at Ditchley. Many of its contents were removed to New York when the couple sold the house shortly after their marriage in 1947.