CIRCA 1765

This panel of Chinese wallpaper reflects the mid-18th century European mania for China and the Orient which popularised not only wallpapers but lacquer and ivory furniture, reverse-painted mirrors and other exotic furnishings and objets many of which were imported by the East India companies.
It became de rigeur in fashionable homes to create fantasy 'Chinese' interiors, and British architects, cabinet-makers and designers such as Thomas Chippendale, William Chambers and William and John Linnell popularised the craze through their publications and were able to supply appropriate furnishings, such as the 4th Duke of Beaufort's `Chinese' bedroom at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, furnished by William and John Linnell in 1750, and the remarkable state bedroom furnished in 1771 with green and gilt-japanned furniture at Sir Rowland Winn's Nostell Priory, Yorkshire.
A set of seventeen similar though smaller Chinese panels was supplied in 1764 by Thomas Bromwich and Leonard Leigh to the 5th Lord Leigh (d. 1786) for Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, listed in the bill as ‘Indian’ (Chinese) pictures in Miss Leigh’s Bedchamber. Thomas Bromwich is listed on his own and in various partnerships trading from Ludgate Hill between 1748 - 87. As early as 1748 his trade card stated he 'Makes and Sells all manner of Screens, Window Blinds, and covers for Tables, Cabins, Stair-Cases, Hung with Guilt Leather, or India Pictures, Chints's, Callicoes, Cottons, Needlework, Matched in Paper; to the utmost exactness, at Reasonable Rates'. Bromwich was appointed ‘Master of the Painter-Stainers Co.’ in 1761, and ‘Paper-hanging Maker in Ordinary to the Great Wardrobe’ in 1764. The firm’s recorded commissions include supplying ‘the new furniture wallpaper’ to Horace Walpole for Strawberry Hill in 1754, and Chinese paper for Lord Darnley at Cobham Hall in 1773 (still in situ), in addition to work at Alscot Park, Corsham Court and Croome Court (G. Beard, Craftsmen and Interior Decoration in England, 1660-1820, London, 1981, p. 248). A papier-mâché ceiling by Bromwich survives at Dunster Castle, Somerset. Nine panels from the set, in their original carton pierre frames were sold Christie's, London, 19 May 2016, lot 85 (£43,750 incl. premium).