Property from a New York Apartment Designed by Olasky & Sinsteden (Lots 132-174)

Now covered in 18th Century green silk damask supplied by Cora Ginsburg, New York

height 43 1/4 in.; width 29 in.; depth 31 in.
109.8 cm.; 73.5 cm.; 78.7 cm.

Catalogue note

This beautifully drawn armchair is almost identical in quality and design to the documented suite of seat furniture supplied by Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779) to William Dalrymple-Crichton, 5th Earl of Dumfries (1699-1768) at Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1759. Dumfries House was built in a Palladian style to designs by Scottish architects John and Robert Adam, and in 1814 was inherited by John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, remaining with his descendants until 2007 when the estate was acquired for the nation by King Charles III, then Prince of Wales. It is a remarkable survival of a British country house whose historic interiors have remained intact, incorporating an important body of work by Georgian Edinburgh cabinetmakers or 'wrights' like Alexander Peter and William Mathie, along with the Chippendale workshop furniture.

Surviving accounts indicate the commission consisted of '14 Mahogany Elbowchairs wt stuffed Backs and Seats cover's, with richly carv'd & scroll feet & castors' along with two sofas destined for the Blue Drawing Room. The design relates to models of 'French Elbow Chairs' published as plates XVII-XX in the first edition of Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754) but is in fact closest in form to an original Chippendale drawing of two additional 'French Chairs' that was not engraved for publication, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (20.40.1(18)). The restrained carving is enhanced by the the elegantly fluid, serpentine silhouette of the moulded legs, rails and armrests that create a three-dimensional incarnation of William Hogath's celebrated Line of Beauty. The Dumfries suite is the only securely documented commission from Chippendale's 'Director period' of the 1750s prior to the evolution of his style in a more neoclassical direction during the 1760s (see Christopher Gilbert, ‘Thomas Chippendale at Dumfries House’, Burlington Magazine, November 1969).

Chippendale famously varied his models slightly so as never to provide an identical design to more than one client, and this chair differs slightly from the Dumfries suite in the treatment of the acanthus carving on the knees, the straight back legs with club feet, and the marginally more arched crest rail. It appears to be of the same model as a pair of armchairs previously in the Sir Joseph Hotung collection, sold Sotheby's London, 7 December 2022, lot 21 (163,800 GBP), and another pair now in a private New York collection was sold Christie's New York, 11 October 2007, lot 50. A single chair of this type was with Moss Harris & Sons, London in c.1967, reproduced in their Centenary Book (1968), p.45, and a further example is illustrated in F. Lewis Hinckley, Masterpieces of Queen Anne and Georgian Furniture (New York 1991), plate 56 no. 107.