IN THE MANNER OF HENRY HOLLAND, POSSIBLY BY JAMES NEWTON, CIRCA 1790

The chairs' design reflects the style of furnishings promoted by the architect Henry Holland (1745-1806) and those in the immediate retinue of francophile advisors around George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV, whilst undertaking the enormous and complex task of the remodelling and furnishing of his official residence, Carlton House, from c.1784-1796. A suite of seat-furniture of almost identical design comprising a pair of sofas, a pair of stools, a pair of bergeres, four armchairs and an unknown quantity of side chairs was at Heveningham Hall, Suffolk and most of which is now at Heaton Hall, Manchester. The frames of the latter suite were embellished with trellis pattern. It was illustrated in The Grand Saloon at Heveningham in O. B. 'Heveningham Hall, Suffolk', Country Life, 25 April 1908, p. 601 and sixty years later the suite was illustrated in The Drawing Room in 'Heveningham Hall', The Antique Collector, August 1968, p. 156. Furnishings of a similar character were supplied to Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter (d. 1793) for Burghley House, Lincolnshire, by James Newton of Wardour Street in the mid-1780s. The seat-furniture is illustrated in situ in 1821 by Lady Sophia Cecil and published in G. Ellwood, 'James Newton', Furniture History, 1995, fig. 16.