A PAIR OF GEORGE II CREWELWORK-UPHOLSTERED WALNUT SIDE CHAIRS, CIRCA 1740

The Earls of Essex, Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire

James John Van Alen (1848-1923)

By descent to Mr. and Mrs. James H. Van Alen II, Wakehurst, Newport, Rhode Island

Sotheby's New York, 20-21 October 2003, lot 273 

Herbert Cescinsky, The Old-World House, Its Furniture & Decoration (London 1924), p.69 (one of a pair)

Cassiobury House was the seat of the Earls of Essex from 1661-1916. Originally a Tudor House, it was rebuilt in the 1670s by the architect Hugh May, with interior mural paintings by Antonio Verrio and woodcarving by Grinling Gibbons, and again remodelled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by James Wyatt and his nephew Jeffry Wyatville. Following the death of the 7th Earl, the house was closed and it contents auctioned in 1922. The house itself was demolished in 1927, though many of its interior fittings and carvings were salvaged and sold, notably the baroque staircase previously attributed to Gibbings and now thought to be by his contemporary Edward Pearce, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and forms part of the newly renovated British Decorative Art and Design Galleries.

James John Van Alen, son of a wealthy Civil War general, was a prominent New York collector and social figure, referred to as 'the American Prince of Wales', who also built a replica of the Tudor Wakehurst Place, Sussex, as his summer 'cottage' in Newport, Rhode Island, subsequently inherited by his grandson James Van Alen II.