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Lot Essay
This magnificent sofa, part of the famous suite of seat-furniture, embellished in the Roman manner, was commissioned in 1764 by Sir Lawrence Dundas, Bt. (d. 1781) and designed by the architect Robert Adam (d.1792) for the principal drawing room of his London mansion at 19 Arlington Street. They were described in Chippendale's invoice as '4 large Sofas Exceeding Rich to match the Chairs' and invoiced at the enormous cost of £216 for all four, at an average cost of £54 each. What is interesting to note, however, is that the sofas were supplied in different widths. One pair (sold by the 3rd Marquess of Zetland's Will Trust, Christie's, London, 3 July 1997, lot 101 (£1,541,500)) measure 86 in. (218.5 cm.) wide, while the present sofa, and its pair (at Duff House, Banff) measure 99½ in. (252.5 cm.) wide.
CHIPPENDALE, ADAM AND ANTIQUITY
To have identified the most expensive chairs and sofas known to have emanated from Chippendale's workshop was a triumph, but what really electrified furniture historians was the fact that Robert Adam's drawings at the Sir John Soane's Museum contained an elegant watercolour design for the sofas signed and dated 1764. This was the first definite evidence that Chippendale ever executed furniture after a design supplied by the leading neo-classical architect and at present it remains the solitary instance of such collaboration between the two men. Adam of course charged patrons for designs (on this occasion Dundas paid £5), whereas Chippendale provided them free to his customers. It is instructive to find Chippendale carrying out one of Adam's designs at this particular time, because in 1764 the neo-classical style was still a novelty in London and Sir Lawrence must have been persuaded that only a professionally trained architect, with the benefit of a foreign study tour, was competent to handle the style. Chippendale, however, rapidly mastered the new idiom and seems to have convinced Adam and his patrons that he could be safely trusted to design and make appropriate furniture for even the most sophisticated neo-classical interiors. Correspondence, recently discovered amongst the Nostell papers, shows that the two men worked harmoniously together, but Adam expected, as a matter of courtesy, to be consulted about proposed furnishing schemes for rooms he had designed. The following passage, in a letter from Chippendale to Sir Rowland Winn, dated 21 June 1774 refers to sending '... a small case containing a section of the Saloon with designs of the furniture which has been settled by Mr Adams and myself and he totally approves everything therein sketched'. At Harewood, where Adam was also the presiding architect, Chippendale wrote to Sir Rowland about his preliminary visit ' .. as soon as I got to Mr Laselles and look'd over the whole house I found that I Shou'd want a Many designs and Knowing that I had time Enough I went to York to do them'. The old myth that Adam regularly designed Chippendale's neo-classical masterpieces is now well and truly exploded.
THE DECORATION OF 19 ARLINGTON STREET
In 1763, shortly after King George III granted his Baronetcy, Sir Lawrence consulted Robert Adam, architect to the King's Board of Works, for advice on the aggrandisement of his St. James's mansion overlooking Green Park. Adam, following the establishment of his family's Grosvenor Square practice in 1758, was responsible for transforming English architecture and interiors in the second half of the 18th century.
The suite was planned to line the walls of the great room-of-entertainment on the piano nobile of 19 Arlington Street, and was upholstered en suite with its wall-hangings and curtains in a Genoa damask, which may have been ordered by Sir Lawrence's son, Thomas Dundas (d. 1820) during his Grand Tour in the early 1760s.
Adam's invoice, submitted on the 18th July 1764 for the 'Design of Sophas and chairs for ye Saloone' and a watercolour sofa pattern, inscribed 'Sopha for Sir Lawrence Dundas' are preserved at Sir John Soane's Museum, London.
At the time that Adam designed this suite, he consolidated his reputation for having true 'taste for the antique' through the publication of the Ruins of Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro, 1764. So he treated the Dundas sofa and chairs façade as the bas-relief of a Roman sarcophagus, and introduced elements such as the confronted sphinx, derived in part from the Roman temple of Antoninus and Faustina as illustrated in A. Desgodetz's Les Edifices Antiques de Rome, 1682. The composition can also be related to his studies of wall-decorations at the Villa Pamphilj, Rome such as he introduced in his 1764 design for a monumental clothes-press for George William, 6th Earl of Coventry (d. 1809), also dated 1764.
CHIPPENDALE AND THE 1762 EDITION OF THE DIRECTOR
The additional plates in the third and final edition (1762) of Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, dedicated to Prince William Henry, demonstrated Chippendale's awareness of the new 'Antique' style, introduced by Rome-trained architects such as Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers. The Dundas sofa pattern relates to his engraving of 1759, issued as plate 29. The latter was described as 'A sofa for a grand Apartment... and will require great Care in the execution', so Chippendale advised 'the workmen to make a Model of it at large, before he begins to execute it'.
THE ICONOGRAPHY
His sofa pattern, recalling Roman virtue, is conceived as a 'triclinium' banqueting-couch. It has a Cupid-bow cresting and rail, while its Ionic-scroll ends have flowered volutes echoing the Apollo-sunflower terminations of its roll-cushions (lacking from the present lot, but depicted in Adam's 1764 design). Its golden frame, enriched with elegant bas-relief ornament is supported by paired and serpentined feet terminating in lion-paws that are also appropriate for a sphinx or griffin. In the centre of the back, a Grecian palm-flower emerges from Roman acanthus that wraps the ribbon-tied reeds of the cresting; more palms embellish the seat-frame and trail entwined husks that enclose flowered paterae to form a ribbon-guilloche on the legs. Acanthus-husks also wreathe the cornice of the seat-rail, whose moulded base serves to support confronted eagle-winged and lion-bodied griffins that guard the central scallop-shell badge. Likewise, crouched sphinx emerge, in the 'arabesque' manner, from flowered acanthus-scrolls to guard the palm-flowers above the legs. These fabulous lion-bodied, eagle-winged and nymph-headed sphinx are the invention of ancient poets, while the central shell cartouche recalls the triumph of Venus.
ANALYSIS OF THE GILDING
The Dundas suite was originally oil-gilt. This is thought to be because the incredible richness of carving would have been lost in the brightness and contrast of burnished water-gilding. Oil-gilding is more uniform and would have given the carving more presence than if it had been water-gilt, which would have necessitated burnishing. The chairs and sofa were restored by Carvers and Gilders in 1998 and tested by University College London. Several layers of gilding were found on the chairs (lot 4) and the sofa (lot 5). The original scheme was a varnished oil-gilding, on an oil mordant tinted with yellow ochre, then a thick coating of animal size glue over a layer of gesso. The next layer applied was a water-gilding on a greyish-brown clay, thought to date from the first half of the 19th century. After this, a water-gilding on a brown clay was applied and then a water-gilding on a bright-red clay, both thought to date from the 1960s and 1970s. The top layer was a bronze paint. These later layers were removed and the traces of the original oil-gilding and gesso was preserved. Fortunately, a significant amount of the original gesso, gilding preparation and oil-gilding has remained: neither this pair of chairs nor the sofa has ever been stripped entirely.
Relatively minor repairs were also carried out: these included repairs to all feet of the sofa; replacing in limewood two carved sphinx heads; replacing in limewood one patera on the left scroll of the sofa; and the palmette on the sofa was reworked. A new gilding layer was applied: first, the original exposed surface was sealed with a shellac and this was then water-gilt which was then distressed using earth pigments, a little rabbit-skin size and then toned down using a spirit-based toning.
SIR LAWRENCE DUNDAS
Scion of the Dundases of Fingask, an ancient Perthshire family dispossessed of their lands in the 17th Century, Sir Lawrence Dundas's meteoric rise to power and fortune was uneclipsed in the 18th Century. Thankfully, his legacy of unerring connoisseurship and patronage remains to this day.
Following in his father's footsteps, Lawrence joined the family drapery business in Edinburgh in the 1730s. Swift to seize the opportunities laid open by the '45 rebellion, his pivotal role as 'Commissary of Forage' and supplier to 'The Royal Train of Artillery' proved supremely rewarding. It was his appointment as Commissary-General of the Army in Flanders during the Seven Years' War, however, that transformed his fortunes and earned him the accolade 'Nabob of the North'. As the account books for his trip to Germany in 1759 testify, with sums totalling close to £2 million, Dundas was the Dundas's financial success was mirrored by his political ambition. Elected MP for Linlithgow Burghs in 1747, his political star was unfortunately short-lived, and he was forced to stand down amidst allegations of corruption the following year. Determined, therefore, to control his political destiny, he embarked on a large-scale programme of land purchase - from Kerse in 1749, to Cleveland, Marske, Loftus and Aske, with its convenient pocket borough in 1762, as well as Moor Park in 1763. His main activities, however, were at first directed towards building up political interests North of the Border - in Stirlingshire, Clackmannan, Fife and Orkney - under the direction of his political advisor, James Masterton.
In this, as in all things, Dundas flourished; in this, as in all things, he inspired bitter jealousy, which found its voice in the libelous 'Varro', declaring in the Morning Post that Dundas 'has already filled the House of Commons with five of his name (ie pocket boroughs) and three or four more who owe their seats to his wealth or influence. He has made a great show of his wealth, having purchased five or six capital estates in England, Scotland and Ireland and matched his children into some of the greatest families - such sudden fortunes gained out of the public purse, are among the heaviest weight of war'. His detractor's words, however, fell on deaf ears; for in1762 he was raised to the Baronetcy and, under Lord Shelburne's sponsorship, was elected MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, whom he served from 1762-68, before his move to Edinburgh from 1768-81.
Political power and architectural patronage have always been inextricably linked, and it was inevitable that Dundas's mind should now turn to the latter. Elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1750, Dundas was perfectly complemented in all things aesthetic by his 'dear life' Margaret Bruce of Kennet (1715-1802), whom he had married in 1738. That Sir Lawrence depended heavily on his wife's taste is profoundly clear from their correspondence. Thus, in discussing Aske, which they had acquired furnished from Lord Holderness, he wrote: 'some of the furniture is old and should be changed.. but everything of this sort I leave to your taste which is the best I have ever met with'., while elsewhere he laments the 'difference one finds in coming from Moor Park where you have everything in such order'. The Dundases' remarkable architectural and artistic patronage was very much the product of their union.
The 1760s witnessed an uprecedented burst of building activity by the Dundases. Unusually, however, save for Dundas House in Edinburgh, for which Sir William Chambers supplied the designs in 1771, all of the Dundas houses were modifications and improvements of earlier existing houses. As might be expected, it was to John Carr of York that they turned for 'new additions to the house' at Aske in 1763, the new Dining Room being 'the best for that purpose that I ever saw' by 1766, as well as for the quadrant wings at Kerse in 1766. However, whilst it was Capability Brown who was contracted to lay out the Park at Aske, it was to Robert Adam that the Dundases looked to 'ornament the Garden, farm and park' at Moor Park in 1766. The latter, a princely mansion designed by Giacomo Leoni in 1720 for Benjamin Styles, had been acquired in what was, arguably, the 'annus mirabilis' of Sir Lawrence's political and architectural ambitions. For 1763 saw not only the end of the Seven Years' War, with its ensuing optimism and prosperity, but also the acquisition of Moor Park and a new London house, 19 Arlington Street.
19 ARLINGTON STREET
As Horace Walpole noted, 'From my earliest recollection, Arlington Street has been the Ministerial street', and it was to serve this political end that Sir Lawrence engaged Robert Adam to draw up plans for improvements to his new London mansion. Built for Lord Carteret between 1732-8, and set back from the road behind a pedimented porter's lodge, Adam's first proposal 'for adding a Great Room towards Green park', with a handsome park facade, was soon abandoned in favour of a simplified modification, the only exterior alterations being the tripartite thermal windows to the principal rooms overlooking the Park. Characteristic of all the Dundas houses, it was upon the interiors, the furnishings and pictures, that Sir Lawrence and Lady Dundas lavished their attention, and it is for this that they are rightfully recognised as among the greatest connoisseurs of the 18th Century.
Perhaps nowhere reveals this more clearly than the interiors of Arlington Street. Unlike at Moor Park, Adam enjoyed a free hand, supplying designs for everything from 'Termes for the salon' as well as the 'vase candlesticks' that stood upon them, to painting in of all the parts of the carpet at large for Mr. Moor' of Moorfields, quite apart from the 'design of Sofa chairs for the Salon £5'. As Lady Shelburne noted in 1768, 'I had vast pleasure in seeing a house which I had so much admired, and improved as much as possible. The apartment for company is up one pair of stairs, the Great Room is now hung with red damask, and with a few large and capital pictures, with very noble glasses between the piers, and Gilt chairs'. This 'red damask' was 'your (Sir Lawrence's) crimson Genoa damask', hung by France in 1764, while the 'very noble glasses' were ordered from the Manufacture Royale des Glaces in Paris in 1763. It was this long drawn out experience that no doubt prompted Sir Lawrence to become a director of the British Plate Glass Manufactory!
Although the 'few large and capital pictures' cannot be precisely identified, Sir Lawrence Dundas possessed one of the most discerning eyes of his generation. His taste was sufficiently broad for him to acquire not only first class Dutch pictures, including the remarkable holding of works by Teniers acquired through his agent Greenwood from the Marquis de Gravelle, as well as several Cuyps and that masterpiece by van de Capelle - in Greenwood's own words, 'ye Capelle is one of ye most capital pieces that is known of him' - but also Poussin's 'Crucifixion', and Murillo's enigmatic 'self-portrait'. He was by no means frightened to commission living artists as well, and the Boudoir at Arlington Street was hung with 'three large views of Moor Park', for which Richard Wilson was paid 80 guineas, as well as that quintessential portrait of an English connoisseur - Zoffany's portrait of Sir Lawrence and his Grandson in the Pillar Room at Arlington Street, for which he was paid £105 on 26 June 1770. The calibre of Dundas's 'cabinet' was quickly recognised by his contemporaries, Lady Mary Coke remarking that his picture collection was 'very fine' as The furnishings of Dundas' houses was of equal calibre. Indeed, Sir Lawrence remains arguably the most important patron of later 18th Century cabinet-makers, and has the distinction, perhaps uniquely, of employing virtually all of the greatest exponents of this art during George III's reign. As his account books so remarkably testify, Dundas employed no less than Samuel Norman, Fell and Turton, Chippendale and Rannie, Vile and Cobb, France and Bradburn, Mayhew and Ince, James Lawson and Pierre Langlois in the 1760s alone.
Those things which could not be found in England, moreover, were sent for from abroad. Thus the rock crystal and ormolu 'lustres' for the Gallery at Moor Park were smuggled from Paris in the diplomatic train of the Prussian Ambassador in 1767, while the Neilson tapestries were shipped from the Gobelins manufactory in June 1769. With these latter purchases, Dundas can clearly be placed in the vanguard of Francophile taste.
Similarly, the acquisitions of the 'chimneypiece of statuary and yellow of Siena marble' in Florence from the sculptor Francis Harwood, through the intervention of his son Thomas, which was dispatched to Aske in 1767, as well as the remarkable lapis lazuli chimneypiece reputedly from the Borghese Palace, which stood in the Tapestry Room at Moor Park, the 'Carlo Maratti' recommended to him by Greenwood, the Zoffoli bronzes and the mythological canvases by Cipriani which dominated the Hall at Arlington Street, could equally place him at the forefront of Italophiles.
A brilliant businessman, a shrewd political animal, a true dilettante and an enlightened patron of the liberal arts and architecture, Sir Lawrence Dundas was an uomo universale. With his 'dear life' Margaret, he has the unique distinction of not only patronising virtually all of the greatest cabinet-makers of King George III's reign, but also the most celebrated architects. It is a formidable legacy.
CHIPPENDALE, ADAM AND ANTIQUITY
To have identified the most expensive chairs and sofas known to have emanated from Chippendale's workshop was a triumph, but what really electrified furniture historians was the fact that Robert Adam's drawings at the Sir John Soane's Museum contained an elegant watercolour design for the sofas signed and dated 1764. This was the first definite evidence that Chippendale ever executed furniture after a design supplied by the leading neo-classical architect and at present it remains the solitary instance of such collaboration between the two men. Adam of course charged patrons for designs (on this occasion Dundas paid £5), whereas Chippendale provided them free to his customers. It is instructive to find Chippendale carrying out one of Adam's designs at this particular time, because in 1764 the neo-classical style was still a novelty in London and Sir Lawrence must have been persuaded that only a professionally trained architect, with the benefit of a foreign study tour, was competent to handle the style. Chippendale, however, rapidly mastered the new idiom and seems to have convinced Adam and his patrons that he could be safely trusted to design and make appropriate furniture for even the most sophisticated neo-classical interiors. Correspondence, recently discovered amongst the Nostell papers, shows that the two men worked harmoniously together, but Adam expected, as a matter of courtesy, to be consulted about proposed furnishing schemes for rooms he had designed. The following passage, in a letter from Chippendale to Sir Rowland Winn, dated 21 June 1774 refers to sending '... a small case containing a section of the Saloon with designs of the furniture which has been settled by Mr Adams and myself and he totally approves everything therein sketched'. At Harewood, where Adam was also the presiding architect, Chippendale wrote to Sir Rowland about his preliminary visit ' .. as soon as I got to Mr Laselles and look'd over the whole house I found that I Shou'd want a Many designs and Knowing that I had time Enough I went to York to do them'. The old myth that Adam regularly designed Chippendale's neo-classical masterpieces is now well and truly exploded.
THE DECORATION OF 19 ARLINGTON STREET
In 1763, shortly after King George III granted his Baronetcy, Sir Lawrence consulted Robert Adam, architect to the King's Board of Works, for advice on the aggrandisement of his St. James's mansion overlooking Green Park. Adam, following the establishment of his family's Grosvenor Square practice in 1758, was responsible for transforming English architecture and interiors in the second half of the 18th century.
The suite was planned to line the walls of the great room-of-entertainment on the piano nobile of 19 Arlington Street, and was upholstered en suite with its wall-hangings and curtains in a Genoa damask, which may have been ordered by Sir Lawrence's son, Thomas Dundas (d. 1820) during his Grand Tour in the early 1760s.
Adam's invoice, submitted on the 18th July 1764 for the 'Design of Sophas and chairs for ye Saloone' and a watercolour sofa pattern, inscribed 'Sopha for Sir Lawrence Dundas' are preserved at Sir John Soane's Museum, London.
At the time that Adam designed this suite, he consolidated his reputation for having true 'taste for the antique' through the publication of the Ruins of Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro, 1764. So he treated the Dundas sofa and chairs façade as the bas-relief of a Roman sarcophagus, and introduced elements such as the confronted sphinx, derived in part from the Roman temple of Antoninus and Faustina as illustrated in A. Desgodetz's Les Edifices Antiques de Rome, 1682. The composition can also be related to his studies of wall-decorations at the Villa Pamphilj, Rome such as he introduced in his 1764 design for a monumental clothes-press for George William, 6th Earl of Coventry (d. 1809), also dated 1764.
CHIPPENDALE AND THE 1762 EDITION OF THE DIRECTOR
The additional plates in the third and final edition (1762) of Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, dedicated to Prince William Henry, demonstrated Chippendale's awareness of the new 'Antique' style, introduced by Rome-trained architects such as Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers. The Dundas sofa pattern relates to his engraving of 1759, issued as plate 29. The latter was described as 'A sofa for a grand Apartment... and will require great Care in the execution', so Chippendale advised 'the workmen to make a Model of it at large, before he begins to execute it'.
THE ICONOGRAPHY
His sofa pattern, recalling Roman virtue, is conceived as a 'triclinium' banqueting-couch. It has a Cupid-bow cresting and rail, while its Ionic-scroll ends have flowered volutes echoing the Apollo-sunflower terminations of its roll-cushions (lacking from the present lot, but depicted in Adam's 1764 design). Its golden frame, enriched with elegant bas-relief ornament is supported by paired and serpentined feet terminating in lion-paws that are also appropriate for a sphinx or griffin. In the centre of the back, a Grecian palm-flower emerges from Roman acanthus that wraps the ribbon-tied reeds of the cresting; more palms embellish the seat-frame and trail entwined husks that enclose flowered paterae to form a ribbon-guilloche on the legs. Acanthus-husks also wreathe the cornice of the seat-rail, whose moulded base serves to support confronted eagle-winged and lion-bodied griffins that guard the central scallop-shell badge. Likewise, crouched sphinx emerge, in the 'arabesque' manner, from flowered acanthus-scrolls to guard the palm-flowers above the legs. These fabulous lion-bodied, eagle-winged and nymph-headed sphinx are the invention of ancient poets, while the central shell cartouche recalls the triumph of Venus.
ANALYSIS OF THE GILDING
The Dundas suite was originally oil-gilt. This is thought to be because the incredible richness of carving would have been lost in the brightness and contrast of burnished water-gilding. Oil-gilding is more uniform and would have given the carving more presence than if it had been water-gilt, which would have necessitated burnishing. The chairs and sofa were restored by Carvers and Gilders in 1998 and tested by University College London. Several layers of gilding were found on the chairs (lot 4) and the sofa (lot 5). The original scheme was a varnished oil-gilding, on an oil mordant tinted with yellow ochre, then a thick coating of animal size glue over a layer of gesso. The next layer applied was a water-gilding on a greyish-brown clay, thought to date from the first half of the 19th century. After this, a water-gilding on a brown clay was applied and then a water-gilding on a bright-red clay, both thought to date from the 1960s and 1970s. The top layer was a bronze paint. These later layers were removed and the traces of the original oil-gilding and gesso was preserved. Fortunately, a significant amount of the original gesso, gilding preparation and oil-gilding has remained: neither this pair of chairs nor the sofa has ever been stripped entirely.
Relatively minor repairs were also carried out: these included repairs to all feet of the sofa; replacing in limewood two carved sphinx heads; replacing in limewood one patera on the left scroll of the sofa; and the palmette on the sofa was reworked. A new gilding layer was applied: first, the original exposed surface was sealed with a shellac and this was then water-gilt which was then distressed using earth pigments, a little rabbit-skin size and then toned down using a spirit-based toning.
SIR LAWRENCE DUNDAS
Scion of the Dundases of Fingask, an ancient Perthshire family dispossessed of their lands in the 17th Century, Sir Lawrence Dundas's meteoric rise to power and fortune was uneclipsed in the 18th Century. Thankfully, his legacy of unerring connoisseurship and patronage remains to this day.
Following in his father's footsteps, Lawrence joined the family drapery business in Edinburgh in the 1730s. Swift to seize the opportunities laid open by the '45 rebellion, his pivotal role as 'Commissary of Forage' and supplier to 'The Royal Train of Artillery' proved supremely rewarding. It was his appointment as Commissary-General of the Army in Flanders during the Seven Years' War, however, that transformed his fortunes and earned him the accolade 'Nabob of the North'. As the account books for his trip to Germany in 1759 testify, with sums totalling close to £2 million, Dundas was the Dundas's financial success was mirrored by his political ambition. Elected MP for Linlithgow Burghs in 1747, his political star was unfortunately short-lived, and he was forced to stand down amidst allegations of corruption the following year. Determined, therefore, to control his political destiny, he embarked on a large-scale programme of land purchase - from Kerse in 1749, to Cleveland, Marske, Loftus and Aske, with its convenient pocket borough in 1762, as well as Moor Park in 1763. His main activities, however, were at first directed towards building up political interests North of the Border - in Stirlingshire, Clackmannan, Fife and Orkney - under the direction of his political advisor, James Masterton.
In this, as in all things, Dundas flourished; in this, as in all things, he inspired bitter jealousy, which found its voice in the libelous 'Varro', declaring in the Morning Post that Dundas 'has already filled the House of Commons with five of his name (ie pocket boroughs) and three or four more who owe their seats to his wealth or influence. He has made a great show of his wealth, having purchased five or six capital estates in England, Scotland and Ireland and matched his children into some of the greatest families - such sudden fortunes gained out of the public purse, are among the heaviest weight of war'. His detractor's words, however, fell on deaf ears; for in1762 he was raised to the Baronetcy and, under Lord Shelburne's sponsorship, was elected MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, whom he served from 1762-68, before his move to Edinburgh from 1768-81.
Political power and architectural patronage have always been inextricably linked, and it was inevitable that Dundas's mind should now turn to the latter. Elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1750, Dundas was perfectly complemented in all things aesthetic by his 'dear life' Margaret Bruce of Kennet (1715-1802), whom he had married in 1738. That Sir Lawrence depended heavily on his wife's taste is profoundly clear from their correspondence. Thus, in discussing Aske, which they had acquired furnished from Lord Holderness, he wrote: 'some of the furniture is old and should be changed.. but everything of this sort I leave to your taste which is the best I have ever met with'., while elsewhere he laments the 'difference one finds in coming from Moor Park where you have everything in such order'. The Dundases' remarkable architectural and artistic patronage was very much the product of their union.
The 1760s witnessed an uprecedented burst of building activity by the Dundases. Unusually, however, save for Dundas House in Edinburgh, for which Sir William Chambers supplied the designs in 1771, all of the Dundas houses were modifications and improvements of earlier existing houses. As might be expected, it was to John Carr of York that they turned for 'new additions to the house' at Aske in 1763, the new Dining Room being 'the best for that purpose that I ever saw' by 1766, as well as for the quadrant wings at Kerse in 1766. However, whilst it was Capability Brown who was contracted to lay out the Park at Aske, it was to Robert Adam that the Dundases looked to 'ornament the Garden, farm and park' at Moor Park in 1766. The latter, a princely mansion designed by Giacomo Leoni in 1720 for Benjamin Styles, had been acquired in what was, arguably, the 'annus mirabilis' of Sir Lawrence's political and architectural ambitions. For 1763 saw not only the end of the Seven Years' War, with its ensuing optimism and prosperity, but also the acquisition of Moor Park and a new London house, 19 Arlington Street.
19 ARLINGTON STREET
As Horace Walpole noted, 'From my earliest recollection, Arlington Street has been the Ministerial street', and it was to serve this political end that Sir Lawrence engaged Robert Adam to draw up plans for improvements to his new London mansion. Built for Lord Carteret between 1732-8, and set back from the road behind a pedimented porter's lodge, Adam's first proposal 'for adding a Great Room towards Green park', with a handsome park facade, was soon abandoned in favour of a simplified modification, the only exterior alterations being the tripartite thermal windows to the principal rooms overlooking the Park. Characteristic of all the Dundas houses, it was upon the interiors, the furnishings and pictures, that Sir Lawrence and Lady Dundas lavished their attention, and it is for this that they are rightfully recognised as among the greatest connoisseurs of the 18th Century.
Perhaps nowhere reveals this more clearly than the interiors of Arlington Street. Unlike at Moor Park, Adam enjoyed a free hand, supplying designs for everything from 'Termes for the salon' as well as the 'vase candlesticks' that stood upon them, to painting in of all the parts of the carpet at large for Mr. Moor' of Moorfields, quite apart from the 'design of Sofa chairs for the Salon £5'. As Lady Shelburne noted in 1768, 'I had vast pleasure in seeing a house which I had so much admired, and improved as much as possible. The apartment for company is up one pair of stairs, the Great Room is now hung with red damask, and with a few large and capital pictures, with very noble glasses between the piers, and Gilt chairs'. This 'red damask' was 'your (Sir Lawrence's) crimson Genoa damask', hung by France in 1764, while the 'very noble glasses' were ordered from the Manufacture Royale des Glaces in Paris in 1763. It was this long drawn out experience that no doubt prompted Sir Lawrence to become a director of the British Plate Glass Manufactory!
Although the 'few large and capital pictures' cannot be precisely identified, Sir Lawrence Dundas possessed one of the most discerning eyes of his generation. His taste was sufficiently broad for him to acquire not only first class Dutch pictures, including the remarkable holding of works by Teniers acquired through his agent Greenwood from the Marquis de Gravelle, as well as several Cuyps and that masterpiece by van de Capelle - in Greenwood's own words, 'ye Capelle is one of ye most capital pieces that is known of him' - but also Poussin's 'Crucifixion', and Murillo's enigmatic 'self-portrait'. He was by no means frightened to commission living artists as well, and the Boudoir at Arlington Street was hung with 'three large views of Moor Park', for which Richard Wilson was paid 80 guineas, as well as that quintessential portrait of an English connoisseur - Zoffany's portrait of Sir Lawrence and his Grandson in the Pillar Room at Arlington Street, for which he was paid £105 on 26 June 1770. The calibre of Dundas's 'cabinet' was quickly recognised by his contemporaries, Lady Mary Coke remarking that his picture collection was 'very fine' as The furnishings of Dundas' houses was of equal calibre. Indeed, Sir Lawrence remains arguably the most important patron of later 18th Century cabinet-makers, and has the distinction, perhaps uniquely, of employing virtually all of the greatest exponents of this art during George III's reign. As his account books so remarkably testify, Dundas employed no less than Samuel Norman, Fell and Turton, Chippendale and Rannie, Vile and Cobb, France and Bradburn, Mayhew and Ince, James Lawson and Pierre Langlois in the 1760s alone.
Those things which could not be found in England, moreover, were sent for from abroad. Thus the rock crystal and ormolu 'lustres' for the Gallery at Moor Park were smuggled from Paris in the diplomatic train of the Prussian Ambassador in 1767, while the Neilson tapestries were shipped from the Gobelins manufactory in June 1769. With these latter purchases, Dundas can clearly be placed in the vanguard of Francophile taste.
Similarly, the acquisitions of the 'chimneypiece of statuary and yellow of Siena marble' in Florence from the sculptor Francis Harwood, through the intervention of his son Thomas, which was dispatched to Aske in 1767, as well as the remarkable lapis lazuli chimneypiece reputedly from the Borghese Palace, which stood in the Tapestry Room at Moor Park, the 'Carlo Maratti' recommended to him by Greenwood, the Zoffoli bronzes and the mythological canvases by Cipriani which dominated the Hall at Arlington Street, could equally place him at the forefront of Italophiles.
A brilliant businessman, a shrewd political animal, a true dilettante and an enlightened patron of the liberal arts and architecture, Sir Lawrence Dundas was an uomo universale. With his 'dear life' Margaret, he has the unique distinction of not only patronising virtually all of the greatest cabinet-makers of King George III's reign, but also the most celebrated architects. It is a formidable legacy.