CIRCA 1800 - 1810

This Regency side cabinet in the fashionable Chinese taste endorsed by the Prince of Wales (George IV) is modelled on a design by Thomas Sheraton, published in The Cabinet Directory (1803). It was probably commissioned by George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751–1837), noted patron of the arts, agriculturist, and philanthropist, for his Brighton home, East Lodge (renamed Egremont House), which he acquired, extended and refurbished in 1807. Lord Egremont inherited an extensive collection of pictures and sculptures when, as a minor, he succeeded to the ancestral seat of Petworth House, West Sussex in 1763. As a young man, he was by repute a man of fashion and made two grand tours of Europe between 1770 and 1772. Although not part of the Prince of Wales's inner circle, he was certainly part of the aristocratic set that surrounded the Prince, and undoubtedly the attraction of East Lodge was its proximity to the Prince’s Indo-Chinese Royal Pavilion. Displayed within the Pavilion was a collection of related Regency furniture including a pair of breakfront cabinets of beech, turned and grained to imitate bamboo in the Chinese taste, with four panels backed by red pleated silk panels, made in 1802 for the Pavilion Long Corridor (E.T. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, London, 1977, p. 95; RCIN 26072). A watercolour, after A.C. Pugin, of the Long Corridor and its ‘bamboo’ furniture suggests it was possibly the inspiration for the present cabinet (RCIN 918156). Furthermore, a second drawing by Sheraton, ‘A View of the South End of the Prince of Wales’s Chinese Drawing Room’, shows another comparable ‘Chinese’ cabinet (The Cabinet Directory, pl. 31). Although the maker of this cabinet cannot be identified, Egremont’s accounts record payments to a number of fashionable furniture-makers including Tatham, Bailey & Saunders in 1814, and in the early 1800s, Charles Hayward, Thomas Butler, John Syers and Oakley & Evans (ed. A. McCann, The Petworth Archives, vol. III, Chichester, 1997, pp. 69-80).