Armchair of gilded beech with replacement upholstery in red and white damask. The front legs are carved at the base with paw feet and at the top with winged sphinx busts supporting the arms. From a set of four, two with different upholstery

Armchair of gilded beech with replacement upholstery in red and white damask. The armchairs have tapering, square-sectioned legs, the front legs carved at the base with paw feet and at the top with winged sphinx busts supporting the arms. The front face of the arm support sections are additionally carved with a pendant anthemion below the sphinx bust. The back legs continue as the stiles of the back which scroll backwards at the top. The front faces are carved with with three flutes, which continue across the lower rail of the back to complete the framing. The seat rail shows raised fillets along the top and base, the recessed centre carved with spaced quatrefoils. The arms are rectangular in section and taper back from the front to joints with the back uprights that are carved as lotus blossoms. Above the sphinx head arm supports the upper surface of the arms are carved with a roundel. Elongated padded arm rests are set on the top of the arms. The structural upholstery of the seat shows a hard upper edge (in the style of upholstery termed 'à tablette') but the back shows only shallow padding with a soft edge (possibly replaced). The modern silk damask is edged with gimp.

The Bettine, Lady Abingdon Collection. Bequeathed by Mrs T. R. P. Hole

One of a large number of pieces of French furniture, ceramics, metalwork, books and other decorative arts, from the Empire period and earlier, acquired in Paris by Charles Stuart (from 1828 1st Lord Stuart de Rothesay) (1779--1845). The Empire furnishings were probably purchased during his first period as ambassador to Paris (1815--1824), the earlier furnishings during his second embassy (1828--30). The Empire furnishings may have been intended for a London house. He acquired 4 Carlton House Terrace, where improvements were carried out from 1827 to 1831, and he moved in in 1834. Older furnishings were more probably purchased for his country house, Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire (now Dorset), which was remodelled and enlarged in the most ambitious Gothic style from 1830 to 1834, with some work continuing throughout the 1830s. In 1841 the house in Carlton House Terrace was let, and the family moved their London residence to Whitehall Yard. It was possibly at that time -- or in 1845, the date of Lord Stuart de Rothesay's death -- that the Empire furnishings were moved to Highcliffe.
Lord Stuart de Rothesay's collections were inherited in 1867 by his younger daughter Louisa, Lady Waterford (1818--1891), who maintained Highcliffe Castle. She left the house and its collections to her distant cousin Major-General Edward Stuart Wortley (1857--1934). When his younger daughter Elizabeth ('Bettine') married Montagu Bertie, 8th Earl of Abingdon, in 1928, he bought the castle and its contents from his father-in-law. The Abingdons sold Highcliffe and most of its contents in 1949, but retained the present group of furniture and some other pieces. After her husband's death in 1963, Lady Abingdon lived for much of the time with her close friends Mr and Mrs Tahu Hole, to whom she bequeathed all her personal possessions on her death in 1978. Tahu Hole died in 1985, and a year later his widow Joyce approached the Museum and offered the collection as a bequest. She died in December 1986, and in accordance with her will the Museum chose those items that it wished to add to its collections. Other items from the collection were sold to benefit the Museum, and the proceeds added to the funds bequeathed.

This chair and its pair (W.5B-1987) are part of a larger suite that included W.3A-1987 and W.3B-1987 (the latter completely re-upholstered, although this pair retain part of their original upholstery, although with later covers). The two pairs now carry different top covers.


A pair from this set of chairs was offered for sale at Bonham's, Bond Street, 6 July 2011, lot 82

The firm of Jacob-Desmalter made this chair. They were the most famous makers of furniture in Paris at the time. Georges Jacob had supplied fine carved furniture for the royal households before the French Revolution of 1789, when the monarchy was overthrown. During the revolutionary years he was careful to keep in favour with whichever government happened to be in power. In 1803 he went into partnership with his second son, François-Honoré-Georges. For ten years this firm, under the name of Jacob-Desmalter, did a thriving business. They supplied furnishings for the palaces of the Emperor Napoleon and for his courtiers.

This armchair was part of a large set owned by Lord Stuart de Rothesay when he was British ambassador in Paris in the 1820s. The chairs were made by the firm of Jacob-Desmalter, who was the best-known supplier of fashionable furniture in Paris at the time. It is possible, though not certain, that they may have been made for Maréchal Ney, one of Napoleon's military leader, known in France as 'the bravest of the brave'. In 1805, after his marriage, Napoleon helped him to buy a house in Paris, the Hôtel de Saisseval. Ney furnished it lavishly in the Empire style. In 1815 Ney was executed by the allies who had defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, and his house and its contents were soon after sold up. We know that Lord Stuart de Rothesay, who greatly admired the bravery of Ney, did buy some pieces at or after the sale, but we are not sure whether this set were amongst his purchases. Jacob-Desmalter often produced chairs with sphinx supporters and it is possible that these come from another house.

W.5A-1987