THE WANSTEAD HOUSE GILT-GESSO ARMCHAIRS ATTRIBUTED TO JAMES MOORE
W: 81.3cm
D: 74.9cm
Further images
Provenance
Sir Richard Child (1680 - 1750), 1st Viscount Castlemaine, later 1st Earl Tylney, twelve chairs for Wanstead House, Essex
By decent to Sir James Tylney-Long (1736 - 94), 7th Bt. and his wife Lady Catherine Windsor
Their daughter, Catherine, married William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, 4th Earl of Mornington
The set sold in pairs from Wanstead House, 10 June 1822 and 31 following days, seventeenth day, lots 23 and 27, the present chairs, acquired by ‘Lane’ for £27.6 and £26.15.6, the remaining eight acquired by Philip John Miles for Leigh Court, Somerset
Given to William, 6th Baron Monson (d. 1862) by ‘Anna’ Wakelin for Burton Hall, possibly mid-1850s; by descent until sold 2015
Private Collection: West Coast, USA
Publications
An Inventory of the Household Furniture, Linen, China, Glass, Books, Wines and Effects of the Late Sir James Tylney Long Bart. deceased at Wanstead House in the County of Essex appraised Feb’y 23 1795 & Following Days, in the ‘Dressing Room’ of the ‘Crimson Bed Chamber’
A. Denney, Burton Hall, privately published, 1950, two of the chairs in the Stone Drawing Room
The interest these chairs hold is difficult to overstate, forming as they did part of the original furnishings of the great, and now lost, Wanstead House in Essex. Built in the second decade of the eighteenth century (1713-7), the house heralded the advent in Britain of a new architectural style, as the latter did a new sense of national identiy of a nation formed only a few years earlier in 1707.1
The house, designed by Colen Campbell, would become an emblem of the Neo-Palladian style, thanks to its publication in Vitruvius Britannicus (1715-25), which in turn became an embodiment of an age of reason, governed by notions of calm, order and harmony, as was the architectural style, which was a work of reason unlike the sensuous (and Catholic) baroque.
The present chairs, in their grand, early Neo-Palladian style, are characteristic of the manner in which new palaces such as Wanstead were furnished in the first half of the eighteenth century. They are defined by bold scrolling arms and four cabriole legs, each of which is beautifully drawn and headed by an ‘Indian’ mask, an exotic motif with perhaps some reference to the founder of the family forntune Josiah Child’s business in the east, and a feature that appears on number of James Moore commissions.2
1 Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711, 1st ed.)
2 For seat and table furniture for the Duke of Chandos for Cannons and the Marquess of Hartington for Chatsworth with similar masks, see A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740 (Woodbridge, 2009) p. 169, pl. 4:51; p. 212, pl. 5:25