Lot Essay
The remarkable collection at Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire was predominantly assembled by Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild (d.1874) who, ahead of contemporary taste, together with the 4th Lord Hertford, Leopold Double and the Earl of Pembroke, actively collected the finest French furniture and objets in the 1840's and 1850's. Published in a privately printed catalogue of 1884, Mentmore passed into the Rosebery family through the marriage of Hannah Rothschild in 1878.