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Lot Essay
The table formed part of the furnishings at Hamilton Palace, once Scotland's largest and most majestic country house. The ancient building of Hamilton Palace underwent three significant stages of transformation, one of which was overseen by the 5th Duke, a known patron who engaged the architect William Adam to update Hamilton Palace (and later the apartments at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh) as early as 1722. Christie's Hamilton Palace sale held in London between 17 June and 20 July 1882 created a sensation in its time, and to this day is recognized as one of the greatest auctions of all time. The table was sold in an equally monumental sale in 1919 prior to the demolition of the great palace where it is described in the sale catalogue as: 'A GEORGE I GILT CONSOLE-TABLE, carved with satyrs Masks, dolphins, a shell and festoons, and surmounted by A green marble slab - 42 in. wide Illustrated in "Country Life," June 14th , 1919, p. 722'.
The table then entered the collection of William Lever, later 1st Viscount Leverhulme (d. 1925), the Sunlight Soap magnate, who was committed to forming a collection representative of the best of British art - an endeavor that lasted for the last thirty years of his life - for his homes at Thornton Manor, Merseyside and The Hill, Hampstead. While the table was sold in the celebrated sale of 1926, much of his exceptional collection remains on public view at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a house museum that he established in Port Sunlight in 1922.
A comparable table from the Leverhulme collection (sold as lot 13 in the 1926 sale, and later Christie's, New York, 24 April 2010, lot 167) features an idiosyncratic frieze which further relates to the impressive lion-headed side tables supplied to Stowe, Buckinghamshire. The Stowe tables, part of the celebrated suite dispersed in the 1848 sale, are attributable to Royal cabinet-maker Benjamin Goodison (d. 1767) who succeeded his mentor James Moore (d. 1726). Both Goodison and Moore are recorded working at Stowe and either is a likely maker of the present table, particularly given the Duke of Hamilton's access to Royal suppliers in his position as Master of the Great Wardrobe.
Christie's would like to extend our gratitude to Dr. Godfrey Evans, Principal Curator of European Applied Art, National Museums, Scotland for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.
The table then entered the collection of William Lever, later 1st Viscount Leverhulme (d. 1925), the Sunlight Soap magnate, who was committed to forming a collection representative of the best of British art - an endeavor that lasted for the last thirty years of his life - for his homes at Thornton Manor, Merseyside and The Hill, Hampstead. While the table was sold in the celebrated sale of 1926, much of his exceptional collection remains on public view at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a house museum that he established in Port Sunlight in 1922.
A comparable table from the Leverhulme collection (sold as lot 13 in the 1926 sale, and later Christie's, New York, 24 April 2010, lot 167) features an idiosyncratic frieze which further relates to the impressive lion-headed side tables supplied to Stowe, Buckinghamshire. The Stowe tables, part of the celebrated suite dispersed in the 1848 sale, are attributable to Royal cabinet-maker Benjamin Goodison (d. 1767) who succeeded his mentor James Moore (d. 1726). Both Goodison and Moore are recorded working at Stowe and either is a likely maker of the present table, particularly given the Duke of Hamilton's access to Royal suppliers in his position as Master of the Great Wardrobe.
Christie's would like to extend our gratitude to Dr. Godfrey Evans, Principal Curator of European Applied Art, National Museums, Scotland for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.