Beschreibung:

and almost certainly supplied by Henry Holland circa 1791, each with a husk and guilloche-carved oval caned back above a serpentine seat, the rails centred by fluted tablets flanked by roundels, on turned tapering fluted legs with stiff-leaf toupie feet, decorations refreshed, 55cm wide, 97cm high, 59cm deep ***Provenance: sold Christie's "The Spencer House Sale", 8th July 2010, lot 1055. Supplied to George John 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834) either for Spencer House, London or Althorp, Northamptonshire and thence by descent. Literature: Albert Edward John, 7th Earl Spencer (1892-1975), Althorp, Furniture, Vol. I, circa 1937 and later P. Thornton and J. Hardy 'The Spencer Furniture at Althorp', Apollo, October 1968, p. 270, fig. 8 These `cabriolet' chairs form part of a suite of at least seventeen. They relate to chairs by Herve supplied for Chatsworth in 1782 which were conceived in a more `transitional' style . Interestingly Herve restricted himself to chair-making and sometimes caning, whereas the `japanned' ornament and gilding was outsourced. A bill presented to Spencer's brother-in-law the 5th Duke of Devonshire by Bickley in 1782 included `japanned seven dozen backstools cane colour' (see I. Hall, `A neoclassical episode at Chatsworth', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 122, June 1980, pp. 400-414, fig. 39). The `Curator' 7th Earl recorded that `many of these chairs had been put awa in the stables and were gilded and covered in silk in 1877/78.