ATTRIBUTED TO INCE AND MAYHEW, CIRCA 1770-1775

This handsome set of chairs, comprised of two sequential lots, formed part of a suite of settees and armchairs commissioned by Sir Willam Lee, 4th Bt. (d. 1799) beginning in the early 1760s for his drawing room at Hartwell House, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, which was designed by the architect Henry Keene (d. 1776), Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. The first pair of chairs is dated slightly earlier than the second pair, and it is likely that Sir William Lee received the first part of the commission circa 1765, and commissioned additional chairs several years later circa 1770-75. This is evidenced by the slight differences between the two pairs which is not unusual for large suites. Differences include variations to the feet, to the angles of the back legs, and some overall slight differences to the carving and dimensions. Both pairs exhibit serpentine cartouche backs in the French 'cabriolet' fashion introduced in the 1760s by cabinet-makers such as John Cobb (d. 1788), and later engraved in T. Malton's Compleat Treatise on Perspective, 1775 (pl. 33, fig. 131). The arched crests of their reeded and antique-fluted frames celebrate lyric poetry with laurel-festooned Roman medallions displaying 'Apollo' sunflowers. More laurels issue from Roman acanthus cartouches on the arms and centers and corners of the seat-rails; while foliage wreathing the columnar legs includes triumphal palms. Such laurelled medallions and richly carved legs appear around 1769 on tables designed by Matthias Lock Junior, author of A New Book of Foliage, 1769 and A New Book of Pier-Frames, Ovals, Gerandoles, Tables etc.,1769 (P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs, London, 1958, figs. 252-253).

Similar palm-wreathed legs, accompanying sunflowered tablets, feature on drawing room chairs supplied in 1773 for Northumberland House, London and bearing the name of the Soho cabinet-maker and upholsterer James Cullen (d. 1779) (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1660-1840, Leeds, 1996, figs. 267 and 268). A closely related chair, with its frame enriched with ribbon-guilloche, forms part of the Marquess of Hertford's collection at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire (English Life Publications Ltd., Ragley Hall, 1993, p. 11 ). A chair of the present pattern in the possession of J. D. Phillips is illustrated in H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, vol. Ill, 1909, fig. 245. A further chair was recently sold from the Hyde Park Antiques Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 31 January 2023, lot 404. A bergere of this pattern was on the Art Market in the early 1990s. Finally, a settee of this pattern, but with upholstered cresting, was formerly in the collection of Arthur Hill at Denton Hall, Yorkshire (C. Hussey, 'Denton Hall', Country Life, 4 November 1939, p. 471, fig. 4) and was more recently sold by Mackinnon Fine Furniture, London.

The Getty collection featured another pair of chairs from the Drawing Room at Hartwell House, which was in their San Francisco residence, sold, The Ann & Gordon Getty Collection: Volume 4; Christie's, New York, 23 October 2022, lot 539.