A DUTCH WALNUT ARMCHAIR

The richly carved chair has a tall triumphal-arched back in the manner of Dutch armorial-decked shields appropriate for Stadholder's chairs. One such chair from the Amsterdam Town Hall Council Chamber is thought to have provided a throne in 1768 for the Stadholder Prince William V (see R. Baarsen, Dutch Furniture 1600-1800, Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 108-109). This present chair is serpentined in the picturesque Louis XV fashion, with its Cupid-bowed cresting terminating in waved volutes, while flowers in bas-relief festoon the pilasters as well as the lambrequined cartouche of the seat rail, whose truss-scrolled pilasters terminate in plinth-supported volutes. This richly moulded frame, wreathed in addorsed and scalloped reeds evoking Pan's Arcadia, relates in particular to 'French Chair' patterns with Chinese-figured upholstery issued by the St. Martin's Lane cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754.