PROBABLE PROVENANCE AT HAMILTON PALACE
These chairs may have once been part of a suite of seat furniture at Hamilton Palace and commissioned by James, 5th Duke of Hamilton and 2nd Duke of Brandon (1703-1743). James inherited the dukedom in 1712 at the age of nine, following the death of his father, and was a prominent patron who engaged the architect William Adam (1689-1748) to update Hamilton Palace, and later the Holyrood apartments, as early as 1722.
The present chairs appear identical to the suite at Hamilton Palace which features in Country Life photograph of the Long Gallery at Hamilton Palace in 1919. Henry Avray Tipping's text accompanying text refers to ‘a gilt set composed of some half-dozen settees and three times that number of chairs’ which have ‘a shell on the knee and below that a band of nulling’. Interestingly, earlier photographs of the Long Gallery taken by Thomas Annan in the late 1870s or early 1880s instead show the room lined with twenty four mahogany armchairs covered with crimson Aubusson tapestry decorated with a ducal coronet and cipher specially commissioned by the 10th Duke in the early 1840s, and clearly recorded in the Long Gallery in the 1876 and 1915 inventories. The giltwood suite illustrated by Tipping in 1919 may have been part of a move conducted by Country Life to show interiors of a more Georgian nature, as has been suggested by Ian Gow.
The suite was sold from the collection of the Duke of Hamilton, Christie’s, 5 November 1919, lot 25 and were described as:
'A Suite of Queen Anne Gilt Furniture, on cabriole legs with shells and foliage, and ball-and-claw feet, the seats and backs stuffed and covered with crimson silk damask, consisting of -
A settee - 5 ft. wide
Two ditto - 4 ft. wide
Two ditto - 3 ft. 6 in. wide
Seventeen chairs
Illustrated in 'Country Life', June 14, 1919, p.721'.
Until 1919 the suite appears to have been dispersed between the 'Oak State Room No. 2', on the first floor of the baroque west wing of the palace (previously the Old State Bed Room), and the 'Hamilton Drawing Room', the first reception room on the first floor of the 1820s extension to the palace. In the 1915 inventory the seat furniture in the 'Oak State Room No. 2' is listed as:
'Eight Chippendale Chairs, on carved and gilt cabriole legs.
(ensuite with nine in Hamilton Drawing Room)
Two Settees - ensuite - on six legs. 3ft. 8 in. x 4ft. wide.'
The seat furniture in the 'Drawing Room, adjoining Hamilton Library', is described as:
'Nine Chippendale Chairs, on carved and gilt cabriole legs, with shells, foliage and eagles' claw and ball feet, square backs and seats, covered with figured crimson silk damask.
A pair of ditto Settees, with high back and sides, on six legs - ensuite. 4ft wide.
A sofa, on six legs - ensuite. 5 ft. wide.'
In the 1876 Hamilton Palace inventory, the equivalent items in the Old State Drawing Room are listed as:
'9 High Back Chairs, stuffed & covered in Crimson Silk Damask Carved & gilt Legs.
2 Setees [sic] to match'.
This seems to tally with the chairs and settees in the Hamilton Drawing Room in 1915.
The '6 Carved & Gilt Arm Chairs, Loose [?Down] Cushins, covered in Crimson Silk Damask' which were in the Old State Bed Room in 1876 were gilt, were covered in the correct fabric, and were in the same room as the eight chairs in the 1915 inventory.
An identical pair of chairs most probably from the same suite was sold Christie's, New York, 17 May 2012, lot 108 ($31,250).