Chair of mahogany, with beech rails, the square back and front seat rail set with gilt-brass mouns, the front feet carved as paws.

Chair of mahogany, with beech seat rails, with gilt-bronze mounts and upholstered in green rayon damask with a small repeating motif. The chair is of very simple form, with rectangular-sectioned legs, uprights and back frame. The front legs have small paw feet carved in mahogany. The front seat rail is set with a central roundel in gilt brass, flanked by symmetrical flower and foliage. The front of the seat rail, above each leg, is set with a gilt-bronze paterae and sixteen smaller versions of this mount are equally spaced around the frame of the back.

Bequeathed by Mrs T. R. P. Hole, from the collection of Bettine, Lady Abingdon

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.

These chairs are part of a set with three armchairs (bergères), W.2-2C-1987.

This chair is very simple in design but was made by the largest and best-known furniture-making firm in Paris in the 1800s. The firm, Jacob-Desmalter, had been founded in 1765 by Georges Jacob, who supplied carved furniture and chairs for Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-93) before the French Revolution. During the revolutionary years Jacob took care to maintain favour with whichever government currently ruled France. In 1796 his sons took over the business, and in 1803 the firm of Jacob Frères changed its name to Jacob-Desmalter. The Emperor Napoleon spent huge sums on redecorating the former royal palaces, and the firm undertook much of the work. Its workshops also supplied furniture to members of the new imperial court.

This chair was part of the furnishings ordered by the military hero Marshal Ney (1769–1815) for his house in Paris, the Hôtel de Saisseval and part of a suite of which three armchairs survive in the Museum's collections (W.2AtoC-1987). The inventory of the house taken after Ney’s execution in 1815 listed the furniture of the Petit Salon as mahogany with upholstery of blue brocaded satin. The current green upholstery was probably put onto the chairs in the 1950s.

W.10A-1987