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Lot Essay
These chairs have triumphal arched backs fretted in the manner of medieval window tracery as introduced in the mid-18th century by the author Horace Walpole and employed at his 'gothick' mansion Strawberry Hill at Twickenham. However these chairs are conceived in the more robust 'gothick' fashion promoted in the early 19th Century at Windsor Castle by James Wyatt (d.1813) as Surveyor General of King George III's Office of Works. With its herm-tapering and cluster-columned pillars, it relates to a Windsor Castle chair now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (see F. Collard, Regency Furniture, London, 1985, p. 165).
James Newton (d.1829) became a master cabinet maker in 1781, he had been apprenticed to Laurence Fell and William Turton and would eventually form a partnership with the former. A partnership which accellerated his career and helped in his early acqaintance with important patrons and their commissions which included much furniture supplied to Burghley House, Lincolnshire. Newton commissioned a closely related 'gothick' oak chair, on behalf of the 4th Earl of Breadalbane, almost certainly to his own design, for Taymouth Castle, Perthshire, in 1810 (see G. Ellwood, 'James Newton', Furniture History Society Journal, vol. XXXI, p. 146, fig. 38. The continued popularity of this type of 'gothick' chair is demonstrated by George Smith's inclusion of two closely related designs in his Cabinet Maker and Upholster's Guide, London, 1827, pl. 143.
James Newton (d.1829) became a master cabinet maker in 1781, he had been apprenticed to Laurence Fell and William Turton and would eventually form a partnership with the former. A partnership which accellerated his career and helped in his early acqaintance with important patrons and their commissions which included much furniture supplied to Burghley House, Lincolnshire. Newton commissioned a closely related 'gothick' oak chair, on behalf of the 4th Earl of Breadalbane, almost certainly to his own design, for Taymouth Castle, Perthshire, in 1810 (see G. Ellwood, 'James Newton', Furniture History Society Journal, vol. XXXI, p. 146, fig. 38. The continued popularity of this type of 'gothick' chair is demonstrated by George Smith's inclusion of two closely related designs in his Cabinet Maker and Upholster's Guide, London, 1827, pl. 143.