Each with a reeded oval padded back, armrests and seat covered in blue toîle, on cabriole legs, one inscribed 'Chester' in pencil on a later corner block, re-gilt
37¹⁄₂ in. (95 cm.) high

Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 27 October 2006, lot 178.

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Lot Essay

The chairs' Roman-medallion backs are of French 'cabriolet' form, such as featured in Thomas Chippendale Junior's designs of the 1770s for Burton Constable, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, fig. 202). Comprised of laurel-wreathed reeds, sacred to the Arcadian deity Pan, they evoke pastoral and lyric poetry and Ovid's Metamorphoses; while their rails are embellished with libation-paterae framed by Roman acanthus and the laurel-festooned 'sunflower' badge of Apollo, the poetry deity.

In the late 1770s Robert Adam (d.1792), architect to George III, introduced such laurel reeds and sunflowered paterae on the seat pattern invented for Sir Abraham Hume's Hill Street, London house (E. Harris, The Furniture of Robert Adam, London, 1963, fig. 124).

The design of related medallion chair-frames at Osterley Park, Middlesex has been attributed to John Linnell (d. 1796), cabinet-maker and upholsterer of Berkeley Square. They were to be upholstered in Gobelins tapestry to accompanying wall-hangings featuring medallion vignettes by Francois Boucher inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses or 'Loves of the Gods' (H. Hayward, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, fig. 92).