Description
By George Oakley Each with a curved tablet toprail carved at each end and to the centre with foliage, above an eagle-carved splat, the straight arms on foliage-scrolled supports, flanking a caned seat with buttoned green leather squab, on reeded tapering legs with Vitruvian-scrolled collars and bulb feet, stamped 'DD' (2) PROVENANCE Supplied to Thomas, 2nd Marquess of Bath (1765-1837) for Longleat, Wiltshire and by descent at Longleat. Literature for the suite: Visible in Mary, Lady Carteret's watercolour of 1836-1837 of the Library at Longleat. 1837 Inventory, p. 47, No. 65 Ante Library or Breakfast Room, 'Oak Lounge with cushions & coverings Twelve carved Chairs caned Seats & Cushions', p. 49, No. 66 Library, 'Two Easy Chairs in Oak Frames and Green Leather coverings... Ten caned Chairs with cane Seats and Green Leather Cushions Six Elbow carved Chairs with Cane seats and Green Leather Cushions'. 1852 Inventory, p. 43, No. 65 Ante Library or Breakfast Room, 'Oak lounge with cushions', p. 44, No. 66 Library, 'Twelve carved Chairs caned seats and cushions', p. 45 'Two Easy Chairs in Oak Frames and Green Leather coverings. Ten carved Chairs, Cane Seats & Green Leather Cushions Six Elbow carved Chairs, cane seats and Green Leather Cushions.' 1869 Inventory, Entrance Hall, 'Eighteen carved oak chairs with cane seats and green leather cushions', Great Library, 'Twelve easy chairs Six carved Oak Arm Chairs with cushions covered en suite (green leather)', Small Library, 'Four carved oak chairs with green leather cushions', Second Floor Bedroom No 4, 'A carved Oak Sofa with pillow and bolster covered with cloth', Second Floor Bedroom No. 1, 'A carved oak couch with bolster and pillow covered with green cloth'. 1896 Inventory (2nd Marquess' Heirlooms), f 95 r Green Library 'Two large unpolished carved oak open armchairs on reeded legs with cushion seats in green morocco leather', f 99 r Front Hall, 'Thirteen carved unpolished oak frame chairs with cane seats and loose cushions in green morocco leather', f 103 r The late Marquess of Bath's Sitting Room, 'An unpolished carved oak frame easy chair with squab seat in green leather and on oak and brass book rest', f 111 r Chapel Corridor, 'Four large carved unpolished oak open arm chairs with cushions in green morocco'. C. Latham, In English Homes, London, 1904, vol. I, p. 182-183 (two side chairs from the suite shown in situ in the Hall). 'Longleat, Warminster', Country Life, 2 May 1903, p. 569-570 (two side chairs from the suite in situ in the Hall). H. Granville Fell (ed.), The Connoisseur Year Book, 1951, London, p. 40, figs. II and III (side chairs from the suite in situ in the Hall). The Marchioness of Bath, Longleat from 1566 to the Present Time, Northampton, 2nd ed., 1951, p. 21 (side chairs from the suite in situ in the Hall). NOTES The library chairs, fitted with squab-cushions in the French manner, formed part of Thomas, 2nd Marquess of Bath's refurbishments at Longleat. They were made by George Oakley (d. 1841), whose Bond Street 'Manufactory and Magazine for fashionable Furniture' attracted the patronage of George IV when Prince of Wales and Prince Regent. They are conceived as 'Chaise a l'antique' in the Parisian style promoted by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 and adopted at the same period by Thomas Chippendale Junior. Their ornament evokes the triumph of lyric poetry, with Apollo's sunflower displayed on their palm-flowered 'Klismos' tablet-rails and the poetry deity's chimerical griffin emerging from foliated scrolls on the rails linking the Grecian-scrolled pillars of their backs. More antique-scrolled foliage enriches their arm-trusses and the reeded columns of their legs. They formed part of a suite of seat-furniture and may have accompanied a library-table. The armchairs were described as six 'large fauteuille Chairs with head tablets highly finished' when the suite was invoiced on 30th October 1812. The armchairs cost œ75 12 s, while their 'bordered seat cushions' cost œ13 10s. The armchairs were accompanied by a set of ten chairs without arms and a pair of fireside bergere chairs that Oakley called 'Woburn' chairs, and related to a 'Library Fauteuil' pattern with fitted reading-desks on the arms, which George Smith illustrated in his Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808 (pl. 42). The present 'fauteuils' were designed en suite with two fireside Grecian sofas, that were invoiced at œ80 and described as '2 Elegant Chaise longues formed of Oak and richly ornamented with carvings in the grecian style supported on bronze Castors square stuffd in green morocco leather and finished with silk tufts & Gymp'. Oakley, who had begun business in St. Paul's Church Yard in the 1780s, had entered into partnership with the carver and gilder, John Evans, in 1800. The use of national oak for Longleat's library furniture reflects an antiquarian association with English furniture of the age of Shakespeare and with the mansion's Elizabethan architecture. Likewise the intricate carving of the rails can also be linked to the contemporary antique Indian ebony furnishings of George, Prince of Wales, which were then dated to the Elizabethan age. Indeed Longleat was well known for its ebony furniture, commented upon by Horace Walpole, and some of which was listed in an inventory of 1740. It is therefore possible that in designing the present suite, Oakley was influenced by the ebony furniture at Longleat. A closely related oak open armchair, with chimerical arm-supports, was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 14 April 1988, lot 17 and another with lion-headed arm-supports, was sold from the Wilfred Evill Collection, Sotheby's London, 12 July 1963, lot 87.
