Lot 35: Sir William Chambers (1723-1796)

Design for a chimney-piece
signed and dated 'W Chambers 1761.' (lower right) and numbered 'N^o 9' (upper right) and inscribed 'the wood carving of this the tablet being enriched and 4 members 10:12 Alken' (on the reverse)
pencil, grey ink with grey and pink wash
10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (26.8 x 21.8 cm.)

This chimney-piece drawing is dated 1761 and signed by Sir William Chambers (d.1796), who had served as architectural tutor to George III and recieved a court appointment as 'Architect' to the Board of Works in that same year. It was possibly executed for George III, as its ornament, beneath a Doric guttae-enriched cornice, is appropriate for a hall or guard-room and celebrates the triumph of Peace. A central tablet is tied by a ribbon-guilloche of entwined palms to tablets with the helmets of the war-god Mars displayed above the pilasters' voluted trusses. The latter are supported on 'British' lion -masks bearing beribboned laurel-wreaths, trophies of weapons and medals celebrating victories on land and sea. The tablet, which has been left plain here, would have featured in a separate drawing. It is mentioned in a note concerning the sculptor's costs for the various elements on the back of the present drawing as 'The tablet being enriched and 4 members 10.12 Alken.'. It was to be executed by the Golden Square sculptor/carver Sefferin Alken (d.1783), who had been amongst the subscribers to Chamber's, Treatise on Civil Architecture, 1759. It has been suggested that Alken was also involved in the year 1761 in the carving of a bookcase, whose pilasters are similarly carved with trusses and lion-masks bearing garlands of fruit and flowers, emblematic of peace and plenty (J. Roberts, George III and Queen Charlotte, London, 2004, no. 267.)

The richly carved pilasters trophies can be related to another design by Chambers for Roehampton House, Surrey (See J. Harris, Sir William Chambers, London, 1970, fig. 83).

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