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Lot Essay
Comparable chairs include: in circa 1796-9, four giltwood chairs commissioned by William Lee Antoine for the drawing room at Colworth House, Bedfordshire, and, from 1796, four giltwood chairs for the wealthy brewer, Samuel Whitbread II for Southill House, Bedfordshire (1). There is a close resemblance between the chairs at Colworth and Southill and the chairs from the present suite. All have near-identical scrolled backs and arms with sabre legs at the back and tapering reeded or fluted front legs with either carved rosettes or scrolls where the arms meet the legs.
Holland, as the leading architect of the day, responsible for the Royal interiors at Carlton House (1783-96) and Brighton Pavilion (1786-87), could engage the finest cabinet-makers to execute his designs. Undoubtedly, his preferred cabinet-making firm was Marsh & Tatham, who were employed at Carlton House, and Southill, as seen from the prolific number of entries for the firm in An Account of furniture received and deliver'd by Benjamin Jutsham on account of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales at Carlton House, vols. I and II (2). This partiality was probably due to Holland’s employment from 1788 of a talented draughtsman, Charles Heathcote Tatham (1772-1842), the younger brother of Thomas Tatham (of Marsh & Tatham). In the mid-1790s, C.H. Tatham was sent to Rome and Naples to sketch ancient architecture and ornament, in addition to assembling a collection of architectural fragments. He returned to England in 1797, and published his drawings two years later in Etchings, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture drawn from the originals in Rome, and other parts of Italy, during the years 1794, 1795 and 1796.
The present seat-furniture was probably acquired by Edward, 1st Earl Harewood (1740-1820) or by his son, Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles (1764-1814) either for Harewood House, Hanover Square, London, or for Harewood House, Yorkshire. The Harewood archive records three substantial payments to Marsh & Tatham (3). The first forms part of the 1st Earl's 'Cash Account' for £109, and is dated August 1800; this probably relates to Harewood House, Yorkshire because payments are also made to Thomas Chippendale Junior and Sir Humphrey Repton. The second and third payments are listed in ‘Beau’ Lascelles’s personal account books, and these are either for the London house, also named Harewood, or for Yorkshire: in 1801, Elward Marsh & Tatham Payment for furniture, £172 10s, and in 1811, Marsh & Tatham Payment of £65 7s 6d. In 1922, part of the suite was photographed by Country Life in the Music Room at Harewood House, Yorkshire (4).
Another closely related armchair but lacking decoration and upholstery sold ‘The Property of the Earl of Harewood’, Christie’s, London, 15 November 1990, lot 48 (£1,760 incl. premium). In the same sale, another chair of similar design sold as lot 49 (£5,720 incl. premium). A further pair of virtually identical giltwood armchairs sold Christie’s, London, 29 November 2001, lot 181 (£17,625 incl. premium). Another armchair sold anonymously, Christie’s, New York, 12 October 1996, lot 85 ($14,950 incl. premium). A pair of virtually identical armchairs to the chairs from the present suite differing only in the moulding of the front seat-rail are illustrated in the Mallett Yearbook 2005, pp. 72-73.
(1) Illustrated E.T. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, London, 1989, pp, 42, 44.
(2) 1806-1820, RCIN 1112484; 1816-29, RCIN 1112775.
(3) Abigail L.H. Moore, Imagining Egypt: The Regency Furniture Collections at Harewood House, Leeds and Nineteenth Century Images of Egypt (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Southampton, 2001), p. 147; WYL250/3/Acs/190; WYL250/3/Acs/192.
(4) H. Avray Tipping, ‘Harewood House, Yorkshire: The Home of the Lascelles’, Country Life, 25 February 1922, p. 245, fig. 4.