CIRCA 1720-40

This mirror is one of a known set of four bearing the crest of Sir George Bowes (d. 1760), ancestor to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Consort of King George VI. Another is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (on loan to the Bowes Museum) and a pair in the Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia. As no commission information or early inventories remain, scholarship suggests one of two possible dates for these mirrors. There were two main periods of renovation of the Bowes family estates, at Streatlam Castle circa 1717-22 and at Gibside circa 1743. Design aspects of the mirror supporting the earlier dating include the strapwork-carved flanking pilasters, similar to those on mirrors of William Gumley, and the eagles' heads popular through the 1720s (A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740, Woodbridge, 2009, pp.295-296). However, the extravagant renovation at Gibside on the occasion of his second marriage in 1743 could have also spurred the commission, alongside a large suite of mahogany furniture supplied by William Greer, including a clothes press probably supplied by Vile and Cobb still conserved in the collection of the museum (M. Wills and H. Coutts, 'The Bowes Family of Streatlam Castle and Gibside and Its Collections', Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 231-243). Both Streatlam and Gibside were vacated in the 1920s, and at that point the mirrors were apparently sold to the London dealer, C. H. F. Kindermann, eventually making their way to the various museums listed above. Interestingly, a nearly identical mirror, lacking the armorials and brass nozzles but likely the pair to this example, was sold Christie's, London, 23 November 2006, lot 55 (£90,000), indicating the possibility that there were originally five or more mirrors in the original commission.