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拍品專文
These magnificent Roman pier tables, with 'Grand Tour' slab tops were supplied for the window piers of the Green Drawing-Room at Castletown House in County Kildare. Castletown was built as a political 'power house' between 1722 and 1725 by the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Conolly (1662-1729). Designed by Alessandro Galilei and continued by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, it remained unfinished and partially undecorated on Conolly's death in 1729. Sir John Perceval, later first Earl of Egmont, writing to Bishop Berkeley in August 1722 remarked on the patriotic political motivation underlying the building of the house and recommended that Conolly should use Irish materials for the building and furnishings: 'I would even carry my zeal to things of art: my hangings, bed, cabinets, and other furniture should be Irish...'. Castletown was Ireland's Houghton and Conolly's vision for this new symbol of Ireland was modelled on Walpole's great country seat which was used for his famous 'congresses'.
When the Duchess of Northumberland visited Castletown in 1763, she admired the exterior 'designed by Gallini the Pope's architect' but lamented 'not a Good House within.... a number of pretty Pictures, Books and Ornaments, Bechrs half furnished'. All this was to change under the creative eye and extravagance of Lady Louisa Conolly, third daughter of the 2nd Duke of Richmond and Lennox, who married the Rt. Hon. Thomas Conolly of Castletown, Ireland, in 1758. By 1770, the Countess of Shelburne's description of Castletown reveals a house transformed:
'The house is a very magnificent stone building with wings, on ye ground floor is a very fine and complete Appartment consisting of a Hall, an Antichamber furnished with pale green damask and a drawing room furnished with a damask of four colours. On the other side of ye antechamber is a Print Room on ye palest paper I ever saw and the prettiest of its kind....Lady Louisa is one of the most amiable and pleasing young women I ever saw. She showed us ye whole house of which ye second storey is as good as ye first where she has a very pretty dressing room fitted up in ye French taste hung with white damask and ye portraits hung with knots of purple and silver ribbons....the house full of fine cabinet work of inlaid wood made in London and pieces of French and old china which gives it great elegance.'
Lady Louisa is known to have patronised 'L'Anglays' - or Pierre Langlois of the Tottenham Court Road - for 'cabinet work of inlaid wood' in the French taste, but like Speaker Conolly, she was also an avid patron of Irish craftsmen. The Castletown account books record payments for plastering, gilding, glazing, tiling, carpentry and painting. Of particular interest is the mention of Richard Cranfield, whose name first appears in the accounts in April 1764 for £53 3s. The following year Cranfield was paid £100 'on account of carving work', £47 18s 6d 'for Carving at Castletown' in April 1766 and then, in April 1767, a further £60. In June of the following year he was paid 'on account of carvers & gilders work' £115 15s and in September £223 1s 5d 'for carving and Gilding Drawing Room and Dining Rooms etc'. In August 1778 a further £35 15s 6d was forthcoming - and the final mention is in the accounts for November 1781, when Cranfield was paid £3 15s 6d 'for framing a picture'.
These pier tables were almost certainly supplied in 1767/68 for the Green Drawing-Room. It was in that year that the mirrors en suite were invoiced by James Jackson, a glass manufacturer and grinder of Essex Bridge, Dublin, who was paid £100 'on a/c of looking glasses' on 19 August 1968, just one month before the frames were paid for, and another 'in full of all demands for looking glasses' for £168 1s 6d. The Greek-key pattern of the plasterwork in the Green Drawing Room is repeated in both the mirrors and the pier tables, as well as the chimneypiece in that room.
Interestingly, the drapery-swagged urns and acanthus-scrolled truss supports directly reflect the Classical influence of the architect James Paine, as manifested in the patterns published in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 3rd edition, 1762. It is no coincidence that William Conolly of Castletown featured as a subscriber to the Director.
The only surviving inventory of Castletown was complied by James Adam in 1893/4 when the house was let to the Wills family. The tables now in place in the Green Drawing Room at Castletown are modern copies.
THE MARBLE 'SLABS'
The distinctive gadrooned black marble 'slabs', incorporating geometric panels of richly figured quartz were probably acquired on the Grand Tour in Italy in the 1730s or 1740s. They were most likely acquired either by William Conolly (d. 1754), nephew of Speaker Conolly who inherited Castletown on his uncle's death in 1729 and who was in Leghorn, Florence and Rome between 1726 and 1727, or his son William Conolly, husband of Lady Louisa, who was in Rome in 1758. The tops directly recall those of a pair of tables in the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. Now in the Chapel Corridor, the Chatsworth tables were originally supplied, presumably under the direction of William Kent, to the 2nd Duke of Devonshire for Devonshire House, London in the 1730s, where they are recorded in the 1811 Inventory as '2 white and gold slab frames supporting each and black and white panelled marble top and leather covers'. The eared Devonshire House slabs have cream alabaster central panels.
A gilding analysis undertaken by Catherine Hassall of University College London revealed that these tables have been gilded twice. The original scheme involved a yellow undercoat and dark brown clay, which was then re-gilded with a fresh coat of gesso followed by water gilding over red clay without a yellow undercoat, indicating that the present scheme is probably quite recent.
When the Duchess of Northumberland visited Castletown in 1763, she admired the exterior 'designed by Gallini the Pope's architect' but lamented 'not a Good House within.... a number of pretty Pictures, Books and Ornaments, Bechrs half furnished'. All this was to change under the creative eye and extravagance of Lady Louisa Conolly, third daughter of the 2nd Duke of Richmond and Lennox, who married the Rt. Hon. Thomas Conolly of Castletown, Ireland, in 1758. By 1770, the Countess of Shelburne's description of Castletown reveals a house transformed:
'The house is a very magnificent stone building with wings, on ye ground floor is a very fine and complete Appartment consisting of a Hall, an Antichamber furnished with pale green damask and a drawing room furnished with a damask of four colours. On the other side of ye antechamber is a Print Room on ye palest paper I ever saw and the prettiest of its kind....Lady Louisa is one of the most amiable and pleasing young women I ever saw. She showed us ye whole house of which ye second storey is as good as ye first where she has a very pretty dressing room fitted up in ye French taste hung with white damask and ye portraits hung with knots of purple and silver ribbons....the house full of fine cabinet work of inlaid wood made in London and pieces of French and old china which gives it great elegance.'
Lady Louisa is known to have patronised 'L'Anglays' - or Pierre Langlois of the Tottenham Court Road - for 'cabinet work of inlaid wood' in the French taste, but like Speaker Conolly, she was also an avid patron of Irish craftsmen. The Castletown account books record payments for plastering, gilding, glazing, tiling, carpentry and painting. Of particular interest is the mention of Richard Cranfield, whose name first appears in the accounts in April 1764 for £53 3s. The following year Cranfield was paid £100 'on account of carving work', £47 18s 6d 'for Carving at Castletown' in April 1766 and then, in April 1767, a further £60. In June of the following year he was paid 'on account of carvers & gilders work' £115 15s and in September £223 1s 5d 'for carving and Gilding Drawing Room and Dining Rooms etc'. In August 1778 a further £35 15s 6d was forthcoming - and the final mention is in the accounts for November 1781, when Cranfield was paid £3 15s 6d 'for framing a picture'.
These pier tables were almost certainly supplied in 1767/68 for the Green Drawing-Room. It was in that year that the mirrors en suite were invoiced by James Jackson, a glass manufacturer and grinder of Essex Bridge, Dublin, who was paid £100 'on a/c of looking glasses' on 19 August 1968, just one month before the frames were paid for, and another 'in full of all demands for looking glasses' for £168 1s 6d. The Greek-key pattern of the plasterwork in the Green Drawing Room is repeated in both the mirrors and the pier tables, as well as the chimneypiece in that room.
Interestingly, the drapery-swagged urns and acanthus-scrolled truss supports directly reflect the Classical influence of the architect James Paine, as manifested in the patterns published in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 3rd edition, 1762. It is no coincidence that William Conolly of Castletown featured as a subscriber to the Director.
The only surviving inventory of Castletown was complied by James Adam in 1893/4 when the house was let to the Wills family. The tables now in place in the Green Drawing Room at Castletown are modern copies.
THE MARBLE 'SLABS'
The distinctive gadrooned black marble 'slabs', incorporating geometric panels of richly figured quartz were probably acquired on the Grand Tour in Italy in the 1730s or 1740s. They were most likely acquired either by William Conolly (d. 1754), nephew of Speaker Conolly who inherited Castletown on his uncle's death in 1729 and who was in Leghorn, Florence and Rome between 1726 and 1727, or his son William Conolly, husband of Lady Louisa, who was in Rome in 1758. The tops directly recall those of a pair of tables in the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. Now in the Chapel Corridor, the Chatsworth tables were originally supplied, presumably under the direction of William Kent, to the 2nd Duke of Devonshire for Devonshire House, London in the 1730s, where they are recorded in the 1811 Inventory as '2 white and gold slab frames supporting each and black and white panelled marble top and leather covers'. The eared Devonshire House slabs have cream alabaster central panels.
A gilding analysis undertaken by Catherine Hassall of University College London revealed that these tables have been gilded twice. The original scheme involved a yellow undercoat and dark brown clay, which was then re-gilded with a fresh coat of gesso followed by water gilding over red clay without a yellow undercoat, indicating that the present scheme is probably quite recent.