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THE DUDLEY HOUSE SUITE
PROPERTY FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF MR. DAVID H. MURDOCK
(LOTS 250-257)
THE PROVENANCE
This princely suite of George II mahogany seat-furniture - retaining its original gros and petit point floral needlework covers and an almost iconic status in English furniture collecting circles - first came to light in The Connoisseur in 1921, when it was published by the furniture historian Herbert Cescinsky in the collection of Sir John Ward, K.C.V.O. Installed in Dudley House, one of London's grandest mansions that lined Park Lane, the suite bore witness to some of the most brilliant and lavish society of the Edwardian period. In all, Cescinsky dedicated four separate articles to Sir John's remarkable collections, both at Dudley House and at Chilton, Berkshire, and whilst its 18th Century provenance eluded him, Cescinsky's researches did reveal that the suite had been acquired by Sir John from Barlow Hall, Manchester.
Although little survives of the early house today, Barlow Hall is first mentioned in the reign of Edward I and remained in the hands of the Barlow family until the death of Thomas Barlow in 1773. Subsequently let, it was sold at auction in 1785 to a neighbouring landowner and maecenas, Samuel Egerton of Tatton Park, Cheshire. Although they owned the estate, the Egertons never lived at Barlow, and it was from a descendant, Baron Egerton of Tatton that the banker and antiquarian Sir William Cunliffe Brooks, M.P., F.S.A. leased the Hall and Park from 1848 until his death in June 1900.
Although a seat of some grandeur in the late Victorian period, was Barlow Hall the 18th Century home of this exceptional suite? As John Hayward has convincingly argued, it is fair to conclude that the suite was acquired by Sir William some time in the second half of the 19th Century, probably after the death of his father in 1864. The threads of his argument are threefold: firstly, The Manchester Mercury of 9 January 1779 contains an advertisement offering for sale the estate and mansion called Barlow Hall. While the rooms in the house, the stabling, outbuildings and gardens are carefully listed, no reference is made to any furniture. The set cannot, therefore, have been in the house when it was sold in 1779. The next possibility to be considered is that Barlow Hall was let furnished. The very fact that the suite came upon the market after the death of Sir William - in whose possession it would have to have been for 52 years, if this second hypothesis is followed - makes this equally unlikely. Finally, the capital value of Sir William's estates alone at his death in 1900 was well over half a million pounds, providing him with the means to acquire significant and important works of art and furniture. Moreover, as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and for some years President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, he was obviously a 'man of taste'.
THE COMPOSITION OF THE SUITE
The commission of this suite of avant garde 'French' tapestry seat-furniture - intended for the Principal Drawing Room of whichever great house - was amongst the grandest and most extensive executed in the 1750's. Over and above the twelve 'cabriolet' side chairs, two 'French' armchairs and the settee offered here, at least one further stool remained intact with the suite - and with its original needlework - at the time of the 1962 Christie's sale. This is in all probability the same stool - lacking its needlework - sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 10 November 1989, lot 54 and subsequently included in Jonathon Harris Ltd., Exhibition Catalogue, November 1990, p.8. A further pair of stools, also probably originally forming part of this suite, was sold from the collection of Samuel Messer, Esq., Christie's London, 5 December 1991, lot 57 (£93,500; $165,500).
A QUESTION OF ATTRIBUTION
The French-fashioned frames epitomise the 'modern' style of mid eighteenth century London. Led by the St. Martin's Lane Academy directed by the artist and author William Hogarth, whose 'Analysis of Beauty' was published in 1753, this style emphasized the importance of 'variety' and the beauty of the serpentine or 'natural' line.
With the 18th Century provenance tantalisingly lost, any attribution of this princely suite must, by necessity, be on stylistic grounds alone. Amongst the closest comparisons can be drawn with the documented oeuvre of William Bradshaw (1728-1775), cabinet-maker, upholder and 'tapissier' of Greek Street, Soho. Bradshaw is first recorded in Frith Street, Soho, in premises previously occupied by Joshua Morris of Soho tapestry manufactory fame. In partnership with the artist Tobias Stranover around 1730 - their joint signatures feature on a settee covered in Fulham tapestry supplied to Lord Brownlow for Belton House, Lincolnshire - this association appears to have been shortlived, as by 1732, Bradshaw had set up on his own at 27 Soho Square, with back premises, probably workshops, at 59-60 Greek Street. His business clearly flourished, five years later supplying furniture and tapestries to Lord Folkestone for Longford Castle and in 1740 to Lord Leicester at Holkam Hall. A subscriber to Chippendale's Director of 1754, at some point in the early 1750's Bradshaw entered into a partnership with his kinsman, George Smith Bradshaw and Paul Saunders, both of whom took over the Greek Street premises on his retirement to Halton, Lincolnshire in 1755 (G. Beard and C. Gilbert's Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp.99-100).
Recent scholarship has widened Bradshaw's documented patrons to include the 2nd Earl of Lichfield (d.1743) at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire. As John Cornforth revealed in his article 'How French Style Touched The Georgian Drawing Room', Country Life, 6 January 2000, pp.52-55, between May 1740 and July 1742 Bradshaw received payments of £339 12s. This enormous sum almost certainly included the closely related suite of tapestry-covered seat-furniture, comprising six armchairs and a settee, which Bradshaw listed in the Principal Drawing Room on the North Side in the Inventory he drew up in 1743, where it was priced at £64. 14s. This figures compares favourably with the '12 Large mahogony Elbow Chairs on Castors 65.-.-. Cases...@ 5.8.4 pr Chair...2 Large Sofoys Do....29.13.10.' supplied by Bradshaw to the 2nd Earl Stanhope for the Carved Room at Chevening, Kent in 1736/7. Although ostensibly inspired by the same pattern as this suite - including the distinctive shells to the arms and legs and cross-hatched decoration to the front seat-rail, with more sparing ornament to the sides - the Ditchley chairs are far more faithful to French prototypes of the 1730's, and the stiffness of both line and ornament suggest a more experimental, earlier and less sophisticated understanding of 'French' rococo seat-furniture. Similarly, the tapestry covers are far more conscious evocations of French Gobelins weavings than the Dudley House needlework covers, described as being of Chelsea or Fulham tapestry in 18th Century Inventories.
Bradshaw's partner, Paul Saunders (d.1771), is also a strong possibility for the authorship of this suite. Appointed Tapestry Maker to His Majesty in September 1757, Saunders and his partner George Smith Bradshaw supplied related suites of principally tapestry-covered 'French' seat-furniture (as opposed to needlework) for both Hagley Hall, Worcestershire (between 1758-60) and Petworth House, Sussex. At Hagley, a further suite in mahogany, supplied for the Saloon but not specifically mentioned in surviving bills, displays very comparable sophistication of line to the Dudley House suite, and as the unspecified payments to Saunders for the period 1758-60 cover more that the tapestry suite, Cornforth has suggested that the side chairs may well be by Saunders as well (J. Cornforth, 'Hagley Hall, Worcestershire - II', Country Life, 4 May 1989, pl.155). Similarly, of the two suites thought to be by Saunders at Petworth, one is in a full-blown early Louis XV taste with tapestry covers depicting Aesop's fables, (illustrated in Cornforth, op. cit., 6 January 2000, fig.5), whilst the second suite, in mahogany, displays a similar frame profile and robust scrolled feet, although without show-rails (illustrated in M. Jourdain and F. Rose, English Furniture of the Georgian Period, London, 1953, pl.44).
A further contender is James Whittle Snr. (fl.1731-59), of St. Andrew's Street, Soho, who entered into partnership with Samuel Norman in 1755. Whittle's principal client, other than the Duke of Bedford, was the 2nd Earl of Egremont at Petworth House, Sussex, from whom the partnership received the enormous sum of £1,332,15 s between 1754-59. It is entirely possible, therefore, that the above-mentioned suites could equally well have been supplied by them. What is more pertinent stylistically, however, is the suite of parcel-gilt seat-furniture supplied to Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness for Hornby Castle, Yorkshire (sold at Sotheby's London, 7 June 1974, lots 63 and 64). Although the original bills again do not survive, Whittle and Norman were employed at Hornby between 1755-59 and the Hornby Castle suite displays the same distinctive cross-hatched ornament to the front seat-rail, drawn from the same pattern of French easy chair, and likewise displays more restrained decoration to the side seat-rails.
Lastly, the celebrated partnership of Messrs. Vile and Cobb cannot be ignored. Close neighbours of Thomas Chippendale in St. Martin's Lane, William Vile and John Cobb are known to have supplied related cabriole leg side chairs to both John Chute at the Vyne, Hampshire in 1753 (at a cost of 19s. each) and the Hon. John Damer of Came House, Dorset between 1756-62. It is interesting to note, therefore, that Ionic scrolled feet and the distinctive ribbon-twist border on the Dudley House chairs also featured on the 'neat mahogony Work Table with Shape Legs neathly Carved & a Scrole on the foot and a Leaf on the knee a Carved finishing to the rail' supplied by William Vile to Queen Charlotte's apartments at Buckingham Palace in 1763 at a cost of £9.15.0 (illustrated in G. de Bellaigue et al., Buckingham Palace, London, 1968, p.113).
THE NEEDLEWORK
The magnificent needlework covers, to which the lavish mahogany frames were intended to be entirely subsidiary, were without question the most expensive element of the commission. Probably inspired by Louis XV tapestry patterns executed at the Aubusson workshops of Jacques Dorliac (fl.1715-42) and embroidered in both tent and cross-stitch, in gros and petit point, the needlework on this suite is outstanding as much on acccount of its superlative quality and brilliant colour as for its ingenious and original design (see E. Standen, Post-Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, vol. II, nos.95 and 99). Each chair is conceived as one of a pair - but while the same floral template is used, different coloured threads are employed within each pair to pick out the flowers, and the ground colours are inverted. This masterful handling - creating lightness and variety - undoubtedly points to a specialist tapissier rather than a deft amateur.
Comparable suites of mid-18th Century seat-furniture with needlework, as opposed to tapestry covers, are extremely scarce, and those whose history is recorded reveal that the needlework was usually executed by the ladies of the house. This is certainly true of the celebrated Glemham Hall suite, whose needlework was, by family tradition worked by Lady Barbara North (d.1755), a talented botanical and ornithological artist (see the pair sold by the late Anthony Edgar, Christie's London, 6 July 1995, lot 50), as well as on the suite at Nunwick, Northumberland, where Lady Allgood worked the covers herself and William Gomm sent up the frames, together with an upholsterer to apply them. Interestingly, the slightly earlier giltwood suite made for Henry, 7th Viscount Irwin for Temple Newsam, Yorkshire in 1746 by James Pascal at a cost of £364.16.0 is also covered in English floral needlework. In March 1745, Sir Edward Gascoine wrote to Lord Irwin from Cambray in France:-I think ye Tapestry-work Chairs here do look very well, & even not unworthy a place in ye handsommest Apartment in England, such as I think you are furnishing...He went on to compare the cost of seat covers worked in England and Cambray, pointing out that London prices were double and recommended that It might be worth my Ladys while to have a handsome design or two drawn & sent over, yr so she might have something quite new..and ye better ye painting ye better would his work be.
Perhaps the 'WH' branded onto the original webbing of one of the side chairs will one day reveal the weavers' identity?
THE ORNAMENT
The drawing room suite focused round a double-chair-back settee, whose richly polychromed upholstery combined with the French 'picturesque' ornament of the frames to evoke the trimph of Venus as nature deity and goddess of love. The settee's triumphal-arched back was centered by a floral trophy, emblematic of Peace and Plenty and Nature's Abundance; and comprising Venus's sacred rose and Bacchic vines strewn on a hilly mound amongst a variety of fruit and flowers. The palm-framed and beribboned trophy, issuing from stems of Roman acanthus foliage, was enclosed in a serpentined and scalloped cartouche. The latter, serving as Venus's shell badge, recalls the chariot in which the water-born deity was brought to land to land, where, according to the ancient poets, flowers sprang at the touch of her foot. The richly carved seat frames are likewise serpentined and scalloped; and while the Roman foliage issues from the Ionic volutes of the feet, the leaves emerging from the scrolled trusses above the taper-hermed legs are accompanied by shells. More shells emerge from the foliage wrapping the sides of the seat-rail, and accompany the central scalloped cartouche of the front, whose trellised ground is incised with flowered and lozenged compartments to recall Rome's Temple of Venus.
RELATED CHAIRS OF THIS PATTERN
This pattern appears to have enjoyed considerable popularity and other chairs, almost certainly executed in the same workshop, are recorded. These include a pair which may have been supplied to the Magdalen Hospital in the late 1750's which was sold by them at Christie's London, 12 May 1966, lot 65. Magdalen Hospital, founded in 1758 by Robert Dingley and other philanthropists, was at Goodman's Fields, Whitechapel until 1772 when it moved to Saint George's Fields, Blackfriars, and moved again to Streatham in 1889. Its original purpose was for the care, protection and rehabilitation of 'Penitent Prostitutes'. Two further pairs - lacking their original covering and with less pronounced scrolls to the legs - are recorded; one was sold from the collection of Joseph and Laverne Schieszler, Christie's New York, 21 October 1999, lot 113 ($187,500), whilst the other was sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 5 July 1996, lot 57 (£56,500). Finally, a single armchair from the collection of the late Thomas Ernest Inman, Esq., was sold at Christie's London, 19 June 1980, lot 25.
As Hayward concluded in The Connoisseur in 1964:- 'Though suites of seat furniture of comparable splendour were certainly made in the eighteenth century, it would be no exaggeration to claim that no finer example of its period is now known to exist'.
PROVENANCE:
Acquired by Sir William Cunliffe Brooks (d.1900), M.P., Barlow Hall, Cheshire, probably after 1864.
Acquired by Sir John Ward, K.C.V.O. for Dudley House, London, circa 1900.
Thence by descent to Colonel E.J.S. Ward, M.V.O., sold at Christie's King Street, 22 November 1962, lot 38 (together with a stool en suite). Acquired by Paul Mellon.
Given by Paul Mellon to Yale University, by whom sold at Sotheby's New York, 25 April 1981, lot 71.
LITERATURE:
H. Cescinsky, 'The Collection of the Honourable Sir John Ward', The Connoisseur, 1921, vol.LX, May, fig. nos. IV-VI.
H. Cescinsky, The Old World House, London, 1924, vol.II, p.205-6.
H. Cescinsky, English Furniture from Gothic to Sheraton, London, second edition, 1937, p.296.
J.F. Hayward, 'An English Suite With Embroidered Covers', The Connoisseur, March 1964, vol.CLV, pp.146-50.
THE DUDLEY HOUSE SUITE
A PAIR OF GEORGE II MAHOGANY SIDE CHAIRS
CIRCA 1755
Details
A PAIR OF GEORGE II MAHOGANY SIDE CHAIRS
Circa 1755
Each padded arched back and bowed seat upholstered in close-nailed mid-18th century English gros point and petit point needlework, one chair depicting pomegranates, flowerheads and acanthus leaves within a scalloped blue border, the other with pomegranates, flowerheads and acanthus leaves within a red scalloped border, the diaper-incised front apron centered by a ruffled shell clasp issuing scrolling acanthus leaves to either side, the opposing C-scroll and shell-headed cabriole legs with rope-twist edge and carved with upspringing acanthus, on scrolled bifurcated feet with knuckled sides, with batten carrying holes, the feet tipped and formerly with casters, one with a circular paper label inscribed in black ink Hon. Sir John Ward (2)
Circa 1755
Each padded arched back and bowed seat upholstered in close-nailed mid-18th century English gros point and petit point needlework, one chair depicting pomegranates, flowerheads and acanthus leaves within a scalloped blue border, the other with pomegranates, flowerheads and acanthus leaves within a red scalloped border, the diaper-incised front apron centered by a ruffled shell clasp issuing scrolling acanthus leaves to either side, the opposing C-scroll and shell-headed cabriole legs with rope-twist edge and carved with upspringing acanthus, on scrolled bifurcated feet with knuckled sides, with batten carrying holes, the feet tipped and formerly with casters, one with a circular paper label inscribed in black ink Hon. Sir John Ward (2)