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Lot Essay
This splendid pair of armchairs bears the hallmarks of Regency taste and exuberance; from the lion-head monopodia front legs, naturalistically carved back legs and foliate carved seat-rails, it embodies the fashion for sculptural and organic forms inspired by Antiquity. The armchairs relate to a design for a Library Chair by George Smith (1786-1826), published in his pattern-book A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Decoration in the Most Approved and Elegant Taste, 1808, plate number 44. The influential and important book is considered the first collection of designs for everyday furniture in a fully developed Regency style. On the title page, Smith is described as ‘upholder extraordinary to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ and his trade card issued from 15 Princes Street, Cavendish Square, featured the Royal Arms and declared that he was ‘Upholder and cabinet maker to HRH The Prince of Wales, draughtsman in Architecture, Perspective and Ornaments’ [John Johnson Coll., Bodleian Library, Oxford].
The early 20th century saw the revival of Regency style, often partly attributed to the iconic 1917 Christie’s sale of heirlooms from the Deepdene Estate of Thomas Hope (1769-1831), another famed Regency arbiter of taste. Thus quite fashionably, this pair of chairs was in the collection of the renowned 20th century British writer and feminist Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield, DBE, known throughout her professional and personal life as Rebecca West (1892-1983). She is considered one of the top writers of her time and enjoyed a great deal of notoriety. Her best known works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), A Train of Powder (1955), and her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, originally published in The New Yorker in 1945. She had a widely publicized 10-year affair with H.G. Wells, but ultimately married banker Henry Maxwell Andrews in 1930. In 1939 they moved to Ibstone House, the surviving portion of a Regency-era manor located in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire (B.K. Scott, Selected Letters of Rebecca West, New Haven, 2000, pp.127-129).
The couple shared a mutual passion for art and architecture and it is therefore conceivable that these chairs were acquired for Ibstone as they suited the overall decorative scheme of the house. West and Andrews remained at Ibstone for the duration of their long marriage until Andrews’s death in 1968. Afterward West moved to a large London flat which was described by her former assistant as ‘crammed with furniture from Ibstone House, a lifetime of priceless glass, china and cutlery from years of entertaining…’ (G.M. Rowe, ‘Nothing like a Dame’, The Oldie, 2019). The chairs were unquestionably in her collection during this time, and appeared to be a favorite, evidenced by two known portraits of her seated in them. The first portrait was taken by Mayotte Magus (b.1934) in February 1977 [NPG x18642] and the second by Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon (1930-2017), taken 9 February 1982 [NPG P846] just prior to her death. The chairs were subsequently sold by Christie's, London (6 October 1983, lot 151) along with her collection of porcelain, decorative arts and paintings, over various sales.
The early 20th century saw the revival of Regency style, often partly attributed to the iconic 1917 Christie’s sale of heirlooms from the Deepdene Estate of Thomas Hope (1769-1831), another famed Regency arbiter of taste. Thus quite fashionably, this pair of chairs was in the collection of the renowned 20th century British writer and feminist Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield, DBE, known throughout her professional and personal life as Rebecca West (1892-1983). She is considered one of the top writers of her time and enjoyed a great deal of notoriety. Her best known works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), A Train of Powder (1955), and her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, originally published in The New Yorker in 1945. She had a widely publicized 10-year affair with H.G. Wells, but ultimately married banker Henry Maxwell Andrews in 1930. In 1939 they moved to Ibstone House, the surviving portion of a Regency-era manor located in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire (B.K. Scott, Selected Letters of Rebecca West, New Haven, 2000, pp.127-129).
The couple shared a mutual passion for art and architecture and it is therefore conceivable that these chairs were acquired for Ibstone as they suited the overall decorative scheme of the house. West and Andrews remained at Ibstone for the duration of their long marriage until Andrews’s death in 1968. Afterward West moved to a large London flat which was described by her former assistant as ‘crammed with furniture from Ibstone House, a lifetime of priceless glass, china and cutlery from years of entertaining…’ (G.M. Rowe, ‘Nothing like a Dame’, The Oldie, 2019). The chairs were unquestionably in her collection during this time, and appeared to be a favorite, evidenced by two known portraits of her seated in them. The first portrait was taken by Mayotte Magus (b.1934) in February 1977 [NPG x18642] and the second by Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon (1930-2017), taken 9 February 1982 [NPG P846] just prior to her death. The chairs were subsequently sold by Christie's, London (6 October 1983, lot 151) along with her collection of porcelain, decorative arts and paintings, over various sales.