The 'Apollo' lyre-backed parlour chair was conceived in the mid-1760s by George III's Rome-trained architect Robert Adam (d. 1792). His 'antique lyre' chairs designed for the Eating Room at Osterley Park, Middlesex harmonised with its overmantel painting of lyre-playing nymphs celebrating the poets' harvest-deity, Ceres. The present chair-backs primarily derive from the library armchairs executed, under Adam's direction, in 1767 and supplied for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) (E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London , 2001, pp. 162 and 198).