Lot Essay
This armchair is a fine quality replica of the celebrated George II 'Bacchic' seat adopted as Sir John Soane's 'Monks Chair' in the parlour of his mansion/museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Soane's magisterial seat, with Jove's garland-and-cartouche-bearing eagle, and bacchic feet, with satyr-masks and lions-paws, formed part of the romantic furnishings of his 'Padre Giovanni' study; and is likely to have been introduced around 1815 while he was planning a New Palace, in his role as 'Architect' to the Public Buildings of Westminster. The chair, with serpentined 'Hogarthian' ornament, relates to patterns in T. and B. Langley's, City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740. Famed as the 'Chippendale' chair since featuring in Eben Howard Gay's novel, A Chippendale Romance, New York, 1915; the original is discussed in R.W. Symonds 'Furniture in the Soane Museum' Country Life, 27 January 1950, pp220-222