A PAIR OF VICTORIAN CARVED MAHOGANY CONSOLE TABLES

The carved double-headed eagles on this pair of single support console tables relate to those found on an armchair attributed to William Kent (d. 1748), the Rome-trained artist, and protégé of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (d. 1753), probably supplied to Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, for the bedchamber at Richmond House, Whitehall, in ca. 1732-33, and now at Goodwood House, West Sussex (Ed. S. Weber, William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, New Haven and London, p. 481, fig. 18.18). Kent is invariably associated to eagle form tables based on a decorative design for Pope’s Odyssey although there are no documented references or examples in houses where he is known to have worked. With their Greek key frieze, the present pair relate to a dolphin support console table that appears in a watercolour by Andrew Rymdsyk of the young Earl of Dalkeith entitled 'A Boy with a Spaniel’, 1779; a virtually identical dolphin console sold Christie’s, London, 11 February 1988, lot 106.