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Lot Essay
This side table is designed in the George II ‘Roman’ fashion, promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and his protégé, the Rome-trained artist/architect William Kent (d. 1748), whose related 1730s sideboard pattern features in John Vardy's Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent (1744), plate 41. With its Vitruvian frieze and truss-scrolled legs terminating in lion's-paw feet, this side table most closely relates to two near-contemporaneous designs: one with a Venus-shell cartouche in William Jones’ The Gentleman or Builder’s Companion (1739), plate 27, and another by Matthias Lock (c. 1740) for a console table with Herculean lion-pelt drapery from an album entitled Original Designs by Matts Lock, Carver 1740-1765 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (Prints & Drawings, 2848.98; P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1984, pl. 48).
This table is virtually identical to a giltwood example with black and white marble top from Quenby Hall, Leicestershire, photographed in Country Life in 1911 and 1920 (‘Quenby Hall – II, Leicestershire: The seat of Mrs. Edward Greaves’, Country Life, 21 October 1911, p. 594; P. MacQuoid, ‘Furniture at Quenby Hall’, Country Life, 12 June 1920, p. 836, fig. 1). The Jacobean-style interiors of Quenby Hall were reinstated in the early 20th century by the architect/designers George Bodley and J.A. Gotch for Mrs. Edward Seymour-Greaves (d. 1941), later married to Lord Henry Grosvenor, who was responsible for the restoration of the house, and the acquisition of much of the furniture.
Another closely comparable table in walnut was formerly in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, F.S.A. (d. 1938), who under the counsel of R.W. Symonds, formed what is probably the greatest collection of English Furniture of the last century (sold Christie’s, London, 18 June 2008, lot 3, £157,250 inc. premium). A further painted and parcel-gilt ‘Kentian’ table of similar model, c. 1740, is in the National Trust collection at Seaton Delaval, Northumberland (NT 1276818).
This table is virtually identical to a giltwood example with black and white marble top from Quenby Hall, Leicestershire, photographed in Country Life in 1911 and 1920 (‘Quenby Hall – II, Leicestershire: The seat of Mrs. Edward Greaves’, Country Life, 21 October 1911, p. 594; P. MacQuoid, ‘Furniture at Quenby Hall’, Country Life, 12 June 1920, p. 836, fig. 1). The Jacobean-style interiors of Quenby Hall were reinstated in the early 20th century by the architect/designers George Bodley and J.A. Gotch for Mrs. Edward Seymour-Greaves (d. 1941), later married to Lord Henry Grosvenor, who was responsible for the restoration of the house, and the acquisition of much of the furniture.
Another closely comparable table in walnut was formerly in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, F.S.A. (d. 1938), who under the counsel of R.W. Symonds, formed what is probably the greatest collection of English Furniture of the last century (sold Christie’s, London, 18 June 2008, lot 3, £157,250 inc. premium). A further painted and parcel-gilt ‘Kentian’ table of similar model, c. 1740, is in the National Trust collection at Seaton Delaval, Northumberland (NT 1276818).