The rectangular bevelled plate below a scrolled broken pediment cresting centred by a cartouche with a grotesque mask below a shell, the frieze with bands of stiff leaves centred by a further mask, the waved apron carved with oak and acorn swags issuing from eagle's heads, re-gilt, the plate 18th century
70¹⁄₂ in. (179 cm.) high; 38 in. (96.5 cm.) wide

Possibly commissioned by Sir George Bowes (d. 1760) for either Streatlam Castle or Gibside, County Durham.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 19 October 2001, lot 287.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 23 November 2006, lot 55.
Wilton Crescent, A Robert Kime Interior; Christie's, London, 23 July 2020, lot 8,
where acquired by the present owner.

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Lot Essay

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
R. Edwards, 'An Eighteenth Century Sale Catalogue - II', Country Life, 9 June 1928, p. civ, fig. 2.
P. MacQuoid, R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, vol. II, p. 335, fig. 60.
R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p. 363, fig. 38.
F. H. Hinckley, Queen Anne & Georgian Looking Glasses, New York, 1987, p. 113, pl. 87, fig. 114.
M. Wills and H. Coutts, 'The Bowes Family of Streatlam Castle and Gibside and Its Collections', Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 237-238 and fig. 13.

This mirror closely resembles a set of four bearing the crest of Sir George Bowes (d. 1760) of Streatlam Castle and Gibside, Co. Durham, forebear of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the wife of King George VI, and the mother of Queen Elizabeth II. One is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (on loan to the Bowes Museum, Co. Durham), a pair is in the Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, and one was previously at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (sold Christie’s, New York, 27 October 2015, lot 73). Although the mirror offered here has slight differences to the Bowes’ four - it is lacking the family's crest, the central mask depicts a smiling rather than serious satyr and there are small variances in the carving of the lower cartouche – in all other respects it is near-identical, raising the tantalising possibility that it was part of an original commission of five or more mirrors.

As no bills or early inventories remain, scholarship suggests one of two possible dates for these mirrors. There were two main periods of renovation of the Bowes family estates, at Streatlam Castle circa 1717-22 and at Gibside circa 1743. Design aspects of the mirror supporting the earlier dating include the strapwork-carved flanking pilasters, similar to those on mirrors of William Gumley, and the eagles' heads popular through the 1720s (A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740, Woodbridge, 2009, pp. 295-296). However, the extravagant renovation at Gibside on the occasion of Sir George Bowes’ second marriage in 1743 could have also spurred the commission, alongside a large suite of mahogany furniture supplied by William Greer and a clothes press probably by Vile & Cobb still conserved in the collection of the Met (M. Wills, H. Coutts, 'The Bowes Family of Streatlam Castle and Gibside and Its Collections', Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 231-243). Both Streatlam and Gibside were vacated in the 1920s, and at that point the Bowes’ mirrors, and possibly this mirror, were apparently sold to the London dealer, C.H.F. Kindermann.