A George II Mahogany Open Armchair in the Manner of William Hallett, Circa 1740

Clinton Howell, New York

This chair is a simplified version of an important pair of mahogany open armchairs with pierced backs likely supplied by the London cabinetmaker William Hallett Sr. (c.1707-1781) to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (1710-1771) at St Giles House, Dorset, in c.1745-46 (sold Christie's London, 5 December 1991, lot 63; £275,000). In the 20th century they formed part of the celebrated collection of Samuel Messer, one of several iconic collections of English furniture and clocks assembled under the guidance of the renowned historian R.W. Symonds and particularly rich in carved mahogany works from the Chippendale period. The Messer chairs share the same pierced serpentine back with identical moulded toprails with central beading and radiating vasiform splat with angled scroll edges on the shoulders, as well as similar moulded outward scrolling armrests. They differ from the offered lot in their rich relief carving of fruiting vines on the central crest and flowerheads, rushes and foliate motifs on the shoe, centre and lower edge of the seat rail, and double scrolled front legs terminating in incurved foliate scroll feet. The disparity between this exuberant decoration and the present chair's pared down surfaces of rectilinear seat rails and unadorned cabriole legs ending in pad feet suggest it may have been designed as a prototype, created in the relatively 'new' wood of mahogany, that would serve as a model for the more opulently embellished chairs of the St Giles House commission, decorated in the fashionable burgeoning rococo style.

The overall silhouette of the back is similar to chair designs published in the First Book of Ornament (1741) by the French-born painter and ornamental artist William Delacour (1700-1767), It is likely Delacour was part of the St Martin's Lane Academy founded by William Hogarth in 1735, which is credited with introducing the rococo style into England through their meetings at a coffeehouse in Upper St Martin's Lane in London's West End. As such he was in close proximity to important cabinetmakers and woodcarvers based in or near the same street, notably Thomas Chippendale and Matthias Lock, and also including Hallett, his apprentice William Vile and Vile's later partner John Cobb, who together formed a consortium known as the St Martin's Lane syndicate, to whom the authorship of the present lot could be attributed. Interestingly, its design also recalls certain elements of a brass-inlaid padouk side chair now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (W.32:1-1959) attributed to John Channon (1711- c.1783), another furniture maker based in St Martin's Lane who, like Hallett and Vile, hailed from the West Country, and it is possible they may have collaborated professionally.