These chairs are typical of the bold, architectural designs of William Kent (c.1685–1748), the creative genius of the early Georgian era who championed the Palladian style. The proportions of the uprights mirror those of a classical column, will recesses in the fluted frieze echo in miniature the sculptural niches found in the exterior of classical temples. The volute-formed legs are also typical of Kent’s output. The chairs can be traced back to the suite of hall furniture created for Sherborne House and its hunting lodge, Lodge Park, in Gloucestershire. The Dutton archives reveal the chairs were carved by James Richards (1721–1767) with James Moore the Younger, almost certainly to a design by Kent.
William Kent and the Sherborne commission
Sherborne House was purchased for the Duttons in the 1550s and welcomed Queen Elizabeth I for two state visits in 1574 and 1592. During the seventeenth century, the estate was expanded to include a hunting and banqueting lodge. There have been various tranches of renovation at the house, most relevantly in this case the one carried out in Sir John Dutton, 2nd Bt in the 1720s and 1730s. The Dutton family were consistently active in politics and in horse breeding throughout the generations and were elevated from Baronets to Barons in 1784.
The renovations to Sherborne House between 1728 and 1730 were not a comprehensive rebuilding project: in the main house, some rooms were added and others, like the reception rooms, were remodelled, while there were also some renovations at the later Lodge Park site. By this point in his career, William Kent had completed his ten-year training in Rome and had finished Burlington House in Piccadilly – in the 1730s, many of his greatest commissions such as Holkham Hall would follow. In a bill dated 29th October 1728, Sir John Dutton notes that he paid £31-10s to Kent for “his trouble making Plans for me at my Lodge & House”.
These chairs were commissioned as part of a matching suite, which comprised of two additional settees and a set of four stools supplied for Lodge Park. The form of the settee in particular was a popular one that Kent often returned to, and it would later feature as one of the designs in the 1744 publication Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. Wm. Kent (fig. 2).1 Variations on this settee design can be found at Houghton Hall and at Raynham Hall, as Susan Weber indicates in figs. 18.20 and 18.26 of her article on Kent’s domestic commissions.2 The settees and stools are listed together in a 1730 bill:
1730
Nov 2
To Mr Moore for 2 Mahogany Settees for ye Dining Room at ye Lodge Carved 30-0-0
To Ditto for 4 Mahogany Stools Carved for ye Dining Room at ye Lodge 20-0-0
While the chairs are itemised in a 1731 bill and presumably intended for the main house (where they are recorded in the Hall in 1740):
To Ditto [Mr. Moore] for 9 Carved Mahogany Chairs for my Hall at £5-10s each 49-10-0 3
The “Mr Moore” of these bills is James Moore the Younger, a carver who had worked with Kent alongside his father on previous projects. James Moore the Elder had been a cabinet-maker to George I, and Moore the Younger held the same role for Frederick, Prince of Wales after 1732. Before the death of Moore the Elder in 1726, they worked together on the magnificent furnishings of the royal apartments at Kensington Palace. The accounts for the Sherborne House commission also note the involvement of the carver James Richards, who was Carver to the Crown after Grinling Gibbons and had worked alongside Kent in the Royal Office of Works. For an example of a similar collaborative effort under Kent's direction with several other named craft.mes n, see the back-to-back writing desks commissioned by Lady Burlington for Chiswick House in 1735: this has a design by William Kent, carving by John Boson and Cornelius Martin, and bears signatures from all three.
The later history of the suite
Much of the furniture at Sherborne house was dispersed in 1940, while the house was requisitioned by the army during the war. The chairs, stools and settees of this suite were all sold to a London dealer named Leonard Knight. In 1943, the settees were acquired by Temple Newsam, and were included in the catalogue of the collects ion published in 1978. The chairs and stools in the suite were bought for Ditchley Park, but when its owner Lord Wilton moved residence in the 1950s, the group was again divided, with two of the stools going to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (accession number 999.34.1). The other two stools were first sold to Benjamin Sonnenberg, and after appearing twice at auction were most recently offered Christie’s London, 7 July 2022, lot 11.
Right: Fig 3: the stools from the suite as pictured in Christopher Gilbert’s article on the suite in the Burlington Magazine, 19695
The present pair of chairs have belonged to the consignor since at least 1969, when Christopher Gilbert published an article on this Sherborne suite, and another pair have been offered at Christie’s New York twice, selling post-sale on the 17th October 2008. The whereabouts of the other chairs in the suite are currently unknown.
1 J. Vardy, Some Designs of M. Inigo Jones and Mr. Wm. Kent, 1744 [facsimile from 2003], pl.42.
2 S. Weber, ‘Kent and the Georgian Baroque style in Furniture: Domestic Commissions’, William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. S. Weber, New Haven, 2013, pp.483 and 488.
3 Ibid., p.488
4 C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, vol II, Leeds, 1978, p.267, fig.324.