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A Cabinet-Maker's office
Unknown - Enlarge image
A Cabinet-Maker's office
- Object:
Oil painting
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, UK (made)
- Date:
ca. 1770 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
oil on canvas
- Museum number:
P.1-1961
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 118a, case WE
Object Type
Paintings showing the interiors of offices and workshops are rare in Britain before the end of the 18th century. The increasing number of wealthy manufacturers and entrepreneurs supplying the luxury trades meant that portraits, hitherto mainly the preserve of the aristocratic members of society, were commissioned by wealthy members of a new and burgeoning middle class. Although the conventional studio backgrounds to portraits were still used, sometimes the workshop or the office was employed as a setting by the more confident sitters for the portraits. They were proud of the lucrative businesses they had built up.
Subjects Depicted
The painting shows a cabinet-maker pointing to a design for a commode and bookcase which has been coloured for presentation to a client. He is leaning on the bookkeeper's desk, which supports the order book and various account books. The figure to the right, pen in hand, is probably the bookkeeper. The simple panelled room contains a desk, stool and plain bookcase for housing the records of the cabinet-maker's business. Only a substantial business, such as that managed by Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779), would require a full-time book-keeper.
