ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM HALLETT, CIRCA 1730-40

This elegant pair of side chairs belong to a larger suite of seat furniture, with serpentine legs embellished with husk-enriched Venus-shells and terminating in ringed eagle-claws, attributed to William Hallett, formerly at Hanbury Hall, Worcestershire and subsequently Upton House, Warwickshire circa 1936. The suite comprised six side chairs, once wing armchair and one sofa.
The attribution to Hallett is based on stylistic similarities to a walnut suite supplied by William Hallett (d. 1781) of Long Acre in 1735 for the London house of Arthur Ingram, 6th Viscount Irwin (d. 1736) and later removed to Temple Newsam House, Yorkshire. The bill for the Irwin suite was submitted by Hallett in August 1735, the eighteen chairs costing 20 14 0, and the two sofas, 4 18 0. The suite was sold anonymously, Christie’s, London, 29 June 1978, lot 19 (C. Gilbert, 'Newly Discovered Furniture by William Hallett', The Connoisseur, December 1964, pp. 224-225). A chair with the same patterned feet was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1898 (R. Edwards, A History of the English Chair, London, 1951, no. 58).

The early 18th Century French needlework, with colourful acanthus-wrapped and ribboned arabesques woven on a golden ground, displays cartouches of flowered brackets and fanciful figures, relate to Chinese woodblock prints or porcelain ornament of the Kangxi period (1662-1722). Similar Chinoiserie cartouches appear on a set of mid-18th Century French giltwood fauteuils by Pierre Bara, in the Drawing Room at Scone Palace, illustrated in Scone Palace, Guide Book. One of the seat backs displays Chinese acrobats and another has astronomers flanking a globe wearing costumes and feathered hats and the seats have dragon cartouches. The needlework is attributed to the workshop of the tapissier Planqu at St. Cyr. It is possible that the needlework upholstery on the present lot, and indeed the entire suite, always belonged together and that the suite of seat furniture was made to fit the imported panels (L. Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Vol. I, 2008, pp. 327-328.)

HANBURY HALL
Hanbury Hall had been in possession of the Vernon family since 1631, until donated to the National Trust in 1940. It is likely that the present pair of chairs formed part of the collection of Thomas Bowater Vernon (1832-1859) who renovated and altered Hanbury Hall between 1856 and 1859. Alternatively, the suite may have been acquired by Thomas’s brother, Sir Harry Foley Vernon, 1^st Baronet (1834-1920), who inherited Hanbury Hall upon his brother’s death. Upon his death in 1920 the suite was sold and presumably acquired around this time by Walter Samuel 2^nd Viscount Bearsted (1882-1948) for Upton House, Warwickshire.

UPTON HOUSE
The collection of Upton House began with Walter Horace Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted art collector and philanthropist, and the eldest and only surviving son of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted (1857 -1927). As the sole heir to the fortune of the Shell Transport and trading Company founded by his father and uncle, he succeeded his father as Chairman in 1921 and bought Upton House, a nondescript and rather small house in Warwickshire, though at the heart of good hunting which, along with art, was his greatest passion. The renovation of the house was entrusted to the architect Percy Moreley Horder (1870-1944) who remodelled the original 17th century house in 1927-29. The addition of a Picture Gallery and a Long Gallery on the ground floor (where the present pair of chairs were photographed in situ in G. Jackson-Stops, Upton House, The National Trust, 1980, p. 12 and S. Murray, 'Upton House, Warwickshire', Country Life, 11 June 1992, p. 144, fig. 4 respectively) was necessary to house the growing art collection. Viscount Bearsted’s greatest love was painting, and he was a Chairman of the National Gallery, a trustee of the Tate Gallery and from 1944 was Chairman of the Whitechapel Gallery. However, he also collected tapestries, furniture, French gold boxes, English silver, English miniatures, illuminated initials, Oriental works of art and European porcelain. In 1948, the year of his death, the house and much of the collection was given to the National Trust, however the Hallett suite was retained by the family until sold Christie’s, London 9 July 1998 lots 92-97. A pair of side chairs from this suite was subsequently re-sold at Sotheby’s, London 2 May 2017, lot 123 for £60,000.