BY THOMAS CHIPPENDALE, CIRCA 1770-1772

This important set of armchairs, en suite with the following lots - a sofa and a pair of conversation stools - was supplied by Thomas Chippendale between circa 1770 and 1772 to Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood (1712-95) for Harewood House. Originally painted blue and parcel-gilt, the armchairs almost certainly belong to the suite recorded in Lady Harewood’s Dressing in an inventory carried out on the death of Edwin in 1795.

The Lascelles family’s connection with Harewood – the great treasure house of the North – began in 1738 when Henry Lascelles (1690-1753) purchased the Gawthorpe Hall estate near Leeds (fig. 1). In 1754, his son and heir, Edwin, embarked on an ambitious building programme to erect a new house on the site of Gawthorpe, which had been demolished, commensurate with his vast inheritance acquired from the family’s sugar plantations in Barbados. Initially turning to the Palladian and local architect, John Carr of York (1723-1807), the latter was subsequently succeeded by the young and ambitious Scot, Robert Adam (1728-92). Adam’s palatial interiors, embellished with plasterwork by Joseph Rose (1745-1799) and decorative paintings by the husband and wife team, Antonio Zucchi (1726-95) and Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), took more than three decades to reach their zenith, but provided the perfect backdrop for Chippendale’s most important and valuable commission, which almost certainly exceeded £10,000.¹ C. Gilbert, The Life & Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 195. Chippendale, and his son, Thomas Chippendale, Junior (1749-circa 1822), worked at Harewood between 1767 and 1797. A wealth of chairs, sofas, stools, tables, beds, commodes, looking glasses and upholstery were supplied for the state rooms, family apartments, basements and servant’s quarters, to create ‘one of the best and compleatest Houses in the Kingdom’, with visitors rewarded with ‘a show of magnificence and art as the eye hath seldom seen’.²

THE HAREWOOD PROVENANCE
Chippendale’s furniture at Harewood includes some of his most celebrated works: the Diana and Minerva commode; the state bed and notable suites of giltwood or japanned seat-furniture including the present set of chairs. The furniture from Harewood is remarkably well preserved despite many of the mirrors and the state bed being moved to stores in the mid-19th century.³
These armchairs do not appear in the surviving Chippendale Harewood account covering the period 30 December 1772 to 7 June 1777, which amounts to £6,838 19s 1d, and consists of fifteen foolscap pages. This account is incomplete, and does not include an earlier bill for £3,024 19s 3d, delivered on 30 December 1772, that is missing but conceivably listed the present chairs and accompanying pieces from the suite.⁴ Moreover, the extant bill only describes the furnishings of three principal rooms and the staircase together with lesser items for the basement level, several costly glasses for the Music Room and Salon, and a miscellany of minor articles.⁵
The 1795 Harewood inventory records a ‘sopha, 2 Conversasion [sic] Stools & 3 Chairs Blue & Gold covered with blue Damask’ in Lady Harewood’s Dressing Room, and although the present set of armchairs number four, they seem to be the most likely candidate when considered with the sofa and stools en suite.
Four further sets of blue and parcel-gilt seat furniture are recorded in 18^th century inventories at Harewood House and the family’s London address, No. 16 Portman Street. At Harewood, a suite of two sofas, two conversation stools and eight armchairs with ‘blue & gold frames covered with Pea Green Damask & green Serge loose covers’ are recorded in the Saloon in 1795 and remain in situ dispersed throughout the state rooms.⁶ A set of twelve armchairs appear to belong to a group of ‘8 Chairs Blue & Gold covered with Blue Damask’ recorded in Lord Harewood’s Bedchamber (sold ‘Thomas Chippendale 300 Years’, Christie’s, London, 5 July 2018, lot 18) (fig. 2).⁷ Gilbert dates these two groups to circa 1771.
At No. 16 Portman Street, ‘6 Cabreole Chairs finish’d in Blue & Gold coverd with Blue mix’d Damask and brass naild’ are recorded in Lord Harewood’s Bedchamber and ‘8 Carvd Cabreole Chairs finish’d in Blue & Gold, covered with Blue mixd Damask and Serge Cases’ with ‘a Large Sofa to match’ are recorded in the Blue Dressing Room.⁸
The present chairs, sofa and stools en suite, pre-date the extant Chippendale accounts, but the grandest set of oval-back chairs supplied in 1773 to the State Bedroom and Dressing Room demonstrate the cost of such chairs. These were invoiced as: ‘6 Cabriole Armd Chairs very richly Carved in the Antique manner and gilt in Burnished Gold Stuff’d & Covered with your Damask £60’, and ‘12 rich Carved Cabriole Armed Chairs gilt in burnished Gold, Covered and finished as the others £120’.
Another set of fifteen closely related chairs, but with additional carved ornamentation, originally numbering eighteen, 'japanned' green and gold and made for the Music Room, circa 1770, is still at Harewood. Two of these chairs sold ‘Harewood: Collecting in the Royal Tradition’, Christie’s, London, 5 December 2012, lot 600 (£214,250 inc. premium).

THE DESIGN
The present chairs derive from a standard Chippendale design; there were 'eight different designs of French Elbow Chairs, of various patterns' some of which had carved aprons and padded cartouche shape backs, in the 1st edition of the Director (1754), plates XVII-XX, and these successful chair designs were reissued in the 3rd edition (1762). However, by the time of the Harewood commission the rococo ornament of these earlier designs had been superseded by the fashion for the 'antique', which Chippendale employed in much of his furniture for Harewood as Adam did in its interiors. A pen and ink drawing for two designs for ‘French’ chairs by Chippendale (illustrated), in the Prints & Drawings department of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, shows this ‘antique’ model with straight supports.⁹ In the design of the present chairs, Chippendale is able to balance the influence of the rococo and the neoclassical, harmoniously combining the ‘antique’ influenced columnar front legs and laurel leaf decorated seat rail with the elegant lines of the cartouche-shaped back, sweeping armrests and scrolling cabriole rear legs.
Further comparable sets of chairs supplied by Chippendale to other patrons include: a set of eighteen armchairs ordered for the drawing room at Saltram House, Devon, in circa 1771-2 (en suite with a pair of sofas) and fourteen armchairs (en suite with two sofas and ten single chairs), originally japanned blue and white, some with gilt details, made for William Constable’s London house in 1774, now at Burton Constable, Yorkshire.¹⁰

THE DECORATION
Paint analysis across this suite, including the present armchairs, revealed that the entire set was originally decorated in blue and parcel-gilt. A ground of white gesso was applied to the wood, followed by water gilding on some mouldings, using a reddish brown clay. The blue paint, mixed from lead white and Prussian blue, was applied last.
The set of chairs must have been split up and used in different rooms, because the later decorations do not always match up, and some items were redecorated more frequently than the others.
For the second scheme of decoration, the original blue and gold scheme was covered with a second lot of blue and gold. The gilded areas were repaired in some areas using fresh gesso and a dark brown clay. The blue areas were retouched with a fresh coat of blue, very similar in tone to the original.
The third scheme was white and gold. The gilded areas appear to have been left untouched, but the blue was covered over with a layer of white oil paint.
There was a complete change for the forth scheme, and the chairs were painted red and gold. A white ground based on lead white was applied in some areas and then the chairs were painted a dull red based on red iron oxide. The gold was applied in some areas over a grey clay and in others using oil gilding laid over a clear oil size. The use of a clear oil size suggests this was done no earlier than the second half of the nineteenth century and is likely to correspond with the Belgravia decorating firm, George Trollope & Sons’ renovation of the Harewood interiors between 1850-53.
The fifth and final scheme, is green and gold as seen today. In some areas the earlier gilding was retained. The red areas were now painted with green. The paint was still based on lead white so this is likely to have been a late nineteenth or early twentieth-century decoration.

[1] C. Gilbert, The Life & Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 195.
[2] J. Jewell, The Tourist’s Companion or the History and Antiquities of Harewood in Yorkshire, Leeds, 1819, p. 27.
[3] C. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 196.
[4] Ibid., p. 195.
[5] Ibid., p. 196.
[6] Harewood House 1795 Inventory, p. 17 and Gilbert, op. cit., vol. II p. 107, fig.181.
[7] Gilbert, op. cit., vol II, p. 111, fig. 189.
[8] Both sets at No. 16 Portman Street, London, are recorded in the 1784 and 1795 inventories.
[9] Museum no. D.712-1906.
[10] Gilbert, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 110-111, figs. 188, 190, 191.