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Lot Essay
Lady Janet St. Clair’s ‘Chinese Chippendale’ chairs are among Scotland’s most celebrated seat-furniture dating from the 18th century’s ‘Age of Enlightenment’. In 1766, they were acquired by her nephew, Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes, 3rd Baronet (1726-92), for Newhailes House, Midlothian, Scotland, and remained in the collection until 1928. Upholstered in their original deep rose-coloured Aubusson tapestry depicting a peacock and leaping deer, and an exotic crane and dog, they are signed by the French tapestry worker, ‘M. R. D. Mage’, probably Pierre Mage, who was employed at the Aubusson manufactory from 1697-1747.
Newhailles
This pair of ‘Chinese Chippendale’ armchairs is part of an original set of four, almost certainly commissioned by General the Hon. James St. Clair of Sinclair, Fife and Balblair, Sutherland (1688-1762), a professional soldier and Whig politician, or by his widow, Janet (d. 1766), youngest daughter of Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes, 1st Baronet (1665-1721). Janet St. Clair maintained a good relationship with her Dalrymple family writing in autumn 1752 to her nephew, Sir David Dalrymple, 3rd Baronet, an account for 'equipping and furnishing out his brother Alexander for the East Indies, paying his freight thither & setling him there'. (1) A double portrait of the General and Janet St. Clair, his by Nattier, hers by Ramsay, both dated 1749, and in a double frame, remains in the Newhailes collection today (illustrated). After Janet St. Clair’s death in January 1766, the contents of her house at no. 60 Greek Street, Soho were sold at auction, and the set of chairs is probably the following entry in the sale catalogue of the contents, ‘4 French elbow chairs with tapestry seats & cases’. (2) The chairs was purchased from the sale by Sir David Dalrymple for his elegant Roman-pedimented villa at Newhailes, near Edinburgh where Lady Dalrymple had decorated her principal apartment with Chinese flower paper in the fashionable French manner. (3) Appropriate for these rooms, the chairs are upholstered in French tapestry of flower-wreathed birds evoking Aesops’ Fables and the Fables de la Fontaine.
The chairs can probably be identified in the 1873 inventory of Newhailes as, ‘Mahogany arm easy chairs in sewed work & stripe slip covers’. (4) The Library, the most important room at Newhailes, had been converted into the Drawing Room at this date when it was used as the principal reception room. In 1917, two of the chairs from the set, ‘the cockerel’ and ‘pheasant’ tapestry panel chairs, were photographed in this room by Country Life, sold Christie’s, London, 27 November 2003, lot 60 (£218,050 including premium). (5) In 1928, a decision was taken by the Dalyrmple family to sell the set of chairs together with another larger suite of 18th century seat-furniture, which also had tapestry covers. However, in recognition of the importance of these two sets of chairs, a framed photograph of them both was permanently displayed in the Library, and their absence remarked upon by Lady Antonia Dalrymple (b. 1925) when she conducted tours of the house.
The mahogany frames
The mahogany frames, which are richly sculpted in the George II ‘Modern’ fashion, described in Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), fuse Chinese and Gothic elements with Roman ornament. The form of these easy chairs with square openwork legs, fretted stretchers and ‘guttae’ feet was termed a ‘French Chair’ by Chippendale, and ‘guttae’ plinths appear in his patterns for ‘Gothick’ and ‘Chinese’ chairs, as well as on the flower-twined pilasters of a ‘Chinese’ china cabinet. (6)
The chair-maker of these chairs has variously been thought to be either William Vile (1700/05-67), William Bradshaw (1728-75) or George Smith Bradshaw (1717-1812); the latter two largely on the basis of the tapestry. However, stylistically, there is more of an affinity to the Royal cabinet-maker, Vile. A set of mahogany chairs, part of a grand suite of drawing-room furniture, attributed to Vile, and commissioned by the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury for St. Giles’s House, Dorset, now known as the ‘St. Giles’s Suite’, is comparable. The St. Giles’s chairs share certain features in common with the Newhailes set, such as the flower-festooned legs terminating in ‘guttae’ feet, and the carved floral terminals of the down-swept arms. This grand suite of drawing-room or saloon furniture originally comprised four settees and twenty-five armchairs (perhaps more). Christie’s has sold pairs of these chairs since 1949 for The Earls of Shaftesbury, most recently a pair sold, Christie’s, London, 8 July 1999, lot 30 (£573,500 inc. premium). The attribution to Vile arises from the superb carving, which is filigreed in the intricate manner adopted by architectural model-makers. In particular, it corresponds to the fashion adopted by George III and Queen Charlotte for the furnishings supplied by Messrs. Vile and Cobb for the Royal residences. Another related suite, comprising over fifty items, was invoiced in 1756 and 1760 to the 2nd Duke of Atholl (1690-1764) by the Piccadilly cabinet-maker, William Masters, and described as, ‘fret down legs, under rails cut open’. (7)
The Aubusson covers
The rose-coloured Aubusson tapestry upholstery depicts birds, after the manner of Jean Baptist Oudry (1686-1755), framed in flower-wreathed pastoral medallions; while the seats feature accompanying animals, similarly enwreathed, in the ‘picturesque’ manner, and incorporating Pan-like masks tied in richly fretted ribbon-scrolls and wrapped by Roman acanthus. The present examples are signed ‘M. R. D. Mage’, and another chair from the original set with the ‘cockerel’ panel ‘Mage’, probably Pierre Mage, who was employed at the Aubusson manufactory from 1697-1747.
One significant possibility for the origin of the covers is that General St. Clair himself bought them in Paris in 1748. He was a British military envoy in Vienna and Turin in mid-1748 and seems to have returned home via Lyons and Paris; Coutts Bank was arranging credit for him in those cities in the autumn of that year. (8) Given that 1747 is the terminus post quem for the manufacture of these covers, as Mage stopped working for the Aubusson manufactory in that year, it is entirely feasible that St. Clair bought them in person but did not have them put onto English frames until the 1750s.
An interesting addendum, and the most surprising aspect, is the Greek Street location of Janet St. Clair’s house, where she lived from 1764-1766. 60 Greek Street neighboured 59 Greek Street, the former premises of William Bradshaw’s tapestry workshop. Intriguingly, Bradshaw is known to have supplied a suite of twelve armchairs and two sofas, with tapestry covers that closely resemble those of the Newhailes set, to the 2nd Earl Stanhope for the Carved Room at Chevening House, Kent in 1736-37. (9) It is conceivable that William Bradshaw acquired or was using designs from the Aubusson manufactory, which he copied for the Chevening commission. In 1755, Bradshaw’s business and premises was taken over by Paul Saunders (1722-71), and his business partner, George Smith Bradshaw (1717-1812), and at the same time they purchased his designs and stock-in-trade. Smith Bradshaw was undoubtedly related to William Bradshaw in some way; the former was subsequently appointed one of William Bradshaw’s executors and trustees of his estate. However, from as early as 1753, Saunders and Smith Bradshaw were described as upholsterers of Greek Street suggesting that they may have been in an early partnership with William Bradshaw. When their partnership dissolved on 15 October 1756, Smith Bradshaw remained at the Greek Street address, and Saunders moved ‘The Royal Tapestry Manufactury’ to ‘Soho Square-the Corner of Sutton-Street’. Mrs. St. Clair’s Greek Street residence was, therefore, in the heart of this remaining tapestry-making business in Soho.
(1) Sederunt of the Tutors and Curators of the Children of Sir James Dalrymple, 27 November 1752 (Newhailes Papers, NLS: MS. 2528'3, ff. 119v-120r).
(2) 18 December 1928, letter from Alice Dalyrmple to Mr. Keith Murray. Information supplied in 2003 by Ian Gow, National Trust for Scotland.
(3) J. Cornforth, ‘Newhailes’, Country Life, 22 August 2002, p. 65, fig. 7.
(4) There are several references to needlework chairs recorded in the Drawing Room in the 1873 inventory; however, two sets of tapestry covered chairs existed at this date, the set from which the present pair were part, and another larger set of two sofas, sixteen single chairs and four stools, sold privately in 1928 to R. Lauder of Glasgow, present whereabouts unknown (Information supplied in 2003 by Ian Gow, National Trust for Scotland).
(5) L. Weaver, ‘Newhailes, Midlothian’, Country Life, 8 September 1917, pp. 229- 230 and 232.
(6) Thomas Chippendale, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 1754, pls. XXI, XXVII and CVIII.
(7) A. Coleridge, ‘William Masters and some early 18th century furniture at Blair Castle, Scotland’, Connoisseur, October 1963, p. 81.
(8) J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, London, 1997, p. 835
(9) G. Beard, Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530-1840, London, 1997, p. 189, fig. 198.
Newhailles
This pair of ‘Chinese Chippendale’ armchairs is part of an original set of four, almost certainly commissioned by General the Hon. James St. Clair of Sinclair, Fife and Balblair, Sutherland (1688-1762), a professional soldier and Whig politician, or by his widow, Janet (d. 1766), youngest daughter of Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes, 1st Baronet (1665-1721). Janet St. Clair maintained a good relationship with her Dalrymple family writing in autumn 1752 to her nephew, Sir David Dalrymple, 3rd Baronet, an account for 'equipping and furnishing out his brother Alexander for the East Indies, paying his freight thither & setling him there'. (1) A double portrait of the General and Janet St. Clair, his by Nattier, hers by Ramsay, both dated 1749, and in a double frame, remains in the Newhailes collection today (illustrated). After Janet St. Clair’s death in January 1766, the contents of her house at no. 60 Greek Street, Soho were sold at auction, and the set of chairs is probably the following entry in the sale catalogue of the contents, ‘4 French elbow chairs with tapestry seats & cases’. (2) The chairs was purchased from the sale by Sir David Dalrymple for his elegant Roman-pedimented villa at Newhailes, near Edinburgh where Lady Dalrymple had decorated her principal apartment with Chinese flower paper in the fashionable French manner. (3) Appropriate for these rooms, the chairs are upholstered in French tapestry of flower-wreathed birds evoking Aesops’ Fables and the Fables de la Fontaine.
The chairs can probably be identified in the 1873 inventory of Newhailes as, ‘Mahogany arm easy chairs in sewed work & stripe slip covers’. (4) The Library, the most important room at Newhailes, had been converted into the Drawing Room at this date when it was used as the principal reception room. In 1917, two of the chairs from the set, ‘the cockerel’ and ‘pheasant’ tapestry panel chairs, were photographed in this room by Country Life, sold Christie’s, London, 27 November 2003, lot 60 (£218,050 including premium). (5) In 1928, a decision was taken by the Dalyrmple family to sell the set of chairs together with another larger suite of 18th century seat-furniture, which also had tapestry covers. However, in recognition of the importance of these two sets of chairs, a framed photograph of them both was permanently displayed in the Library, and their absence remarked upon by Lady Antonia Dalrymple (b. 1925) when she conducted tours of the house.
The mahogany frames
The mahogany frames, which are richly sculpted in the George II ‘Modern’ fashion, described in Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), fuse Chinese and Gothic elements with Roman ornament. The form of these easy chairs with square openwork legs, fretted stretchers and ‘guttae’ feet was termed a ‘French Chair’ by Chippendale, and ‘guttae’ plinths appear in his patterns for ‘Gothick’ and ‘Chinese’ chairs, as well as on the flower-twined pilasters of a ‘Chinese’ china cabinet. (6)
The chair-maker of these chairs has variously been thought to be either William Vile (1700/05-67), William Bradshaw (1728-75) or George Smith Bradshaw (1717-1812); the latter two largely on the basis of the tapestry. However, stylistically, there is more of an affinity to the Royal cabinet-maker, Vile. A set of mahogany chairs, part of a grand suite of drawing-room furniture, attributed to Vile, and commissioned by the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury for St. Giles’s House, Dorset, now known as the ‘St. Giles’s Suite’, is comparable. The St. Giles’s chairs share certain features in common with the Newhailes set, such as the flower-festooned legs terminating in ‘guttae’ feet, and the carved floral terminals of the down-swept arms. This grand suite of drawing-room or saloon furniture originally comprised four settees and twenty-five armchairs (perhaps more). Christie’s has sold pairs of these chairs since 1949 for The Earls of Shaftesbury, most recently a pair sold, Christie’s, London, 8 July 1999, lot 30 (£573,500 inc. premium). The attribution to Vile arises from the superb carving, which is filigreed in the intricate manner adopted by architectural model-makers. In particular, it corresponds to the fashion adopted by George III and Queen Charlotte for the furnishings supplied by Messrs. Vile and Cobb for the Royal residences. Another related suite, comprising over fifty items, was invoiced in 1756 and 1760 to the 2nd Duke of Atholl (1690-1764) by the Piccadilly cabinet-maker, William Masters, and described as, ‘fret down legs, under rails cut open’. (7)
The Aubusson covers
The rose-coloured Aubusson tapestry upholstery depicts birds, after the manner of Jean Baptist Oudry (1686-1755), framed in flower-wreathed pastoral medallions; while the seats feature accompanying animals, similarly enwreathed, in the ‘picturesque’ manner, and incorporating Pan-like masks tied in richly fretted ribbon-scrolls and wrapped by Roman acanthus. The present examples are signed ‘M. R. D. Mage’, and another chair from the original set with the ‘cockerel’ panel ‘Mage’, probably Pierre Mage, who was employed at the Aubusson manufactory from 1697-1747.
One significant possibility for the origin of the covers is that General St. Clair himself bought them in Paris in 1748. He was a British military envoy in Vienna and Turin in mid-1748 and seems to have returned home via Lyons and Paris; Coutts Bank was arranging credit for him in those cities in the autumn of that year. (8) Given that 1747 is the terminus post quem for the manufacture of these covers, as Mage stopped working for the Aubusson manufactory in that year, it is entirely feasible that St. Clair bought them in person but did not have them put onto English frames until the 1750s.
An interesting addendum, and the most surprising aspect, is the Greek Street location of Janet St. Clair’s house, where she lived from 1764-1766. 60 Greek Street neighboured 59 Greek Street, the former premises of William Bradshaw’s tapestry workshop. Intriguingly, Bradshaw is known to have supplied a suite of twelve armchairs and two sofas, with tapestry covers that closely resemble those of the Newhailes set, to the 2nd Earl Stanhope for the Carved Room at Chevening House, Kent in 1736-37. (9) It is conceivable that William Bradshaw acquired or was using designs from the Aubusson manufactory, which he copied for the Chevening commission. In 1755, Bradshaw’s business and premises was taken over by Paul Saunders (1722-71), and his business partner, George Smith Bradshaw (1717-1812), and at the same time they purchased his designs and stock-in-trade. Smith Bradshaw was undoubtedly related to William Bradshaw in some way; the former was subsequently appointed one of William Bradshaw’s executors and trustees of his estate. However, from as early as 1753, Saunders and Smith Bradshaw were described as upholsterers of Greek Street suggesting that they may have been in an early partnership with William Bradshaw. When their partnership dissolved on 15 October 1756, Smith Bradshaw remained at the Greek Street address, and Saunders moved ‘The Royal Tapestry Manufactury’ to ‘Soho Square-the Corner of Sutton-Street’. Mrs. St. Clair’s Greek Street residence was, therefore, in the heart of this remaining tapestry-making business in Soho.
(1) Sederunt of the Tutors and Curators of the Children of Sir James Dalrymple, 27 November 1752 (Newhailes Papers, NLS: MS. 2528'3, ff. 119v-120r).
(2) 18 December 1928, letter from Alice Dalyrmple to Mr. Keith Murray. Information supplied in 2003 by Ian Gow, National Trust for Scotland.
(3) J. Cornforth, ‘Newhailes’, Country Life, 22 August 2002, p. 65, fig. 7.
(4) There are several references to needlework chairs recorded in the Drawing Room in the 1873 inventory; however, two sets of tapestry covered chairs existed at this date, the set from which the present pair were part, and another larger set of two sofas, sixteen single chairs and four stools, sold privately in 1928 to R. Lauder of Glasgow, present whereabouts unknown (Information supplied in 2003 by Ian Gow, National Trust for Scotland).
(5) L. Weaver, ‘Newhailes, Midlothian’, Country Life, 8 September 1917, pp. 229- 230 and 232.
(6) Thomas Chippendale, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 1754, pls. XXI, XXVII and CVIII.
(7) A. Coleridge, ‘William Masters and some early 18th century furniture at Blair Castle, Scotland’, Connoisseur, October 1963, p. 81.
(8) J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, London, 1997, p. 835
(9) G. Beard, Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530-1840, London, 1997, p. 189, fig. 198.