A Set of Six George II Polychrome Painted Oak Hall Chairs Mid-18th Century

Perigrine Hyde Osborne, 3rd Duke of Leeds (b. 1691-d.1731) or his son Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds (b. 1713-d.1789)

Thence by descent to Francis Osborne, 6th Duke of Leeds, Hornby Castle

Mr. and Mrs. Basil Ionides, Buxted Park, Sussex

The Ionides Collection, sold, Sotheby's London, 1 November 1963, lot 175 (set of thirteen)

Colefax & Fowler Antiques, London

Sotheby's New York, 25 April 1986, lot 33

Alistair Sampson Antiques, London, 19 June 1989 (set of four)

Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660-1840, Leeds 1986

Peter Thornton and Maurice Tomlin, Furniture History, 1980

Giles Worsley, England’s Lost Houses, London 2002

The present set of hall chairs must have been commissioned by the Perigrine Hyde Osborne, 3rd Duke of Leeds (1691-1731) or his son Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds (1713-1789) for either Kiveton Hall, Yorkshire or their house at Wimbeldon, Surrey. It is more likely that they were commissioned by the later Duke perhaps in celebration of his elevation to the Dukedom in 1731. These chairs are very similar to a set of eighteen hall chairs of ‘sgabello’ type supplied by George Nix to the Countess of Dysart and the Duke of Lauderdale at Ham House, in 1730 for £18 (Beard and Gilbert, op. cit.p. 649). Like the chairs offered, the backs are painted with the Tollemache family coat of arms (illustrated, Thornton and Tomlin, fig. 152); however, each of these chairs is varnished and not painted like the present chairs.

These chairs possibly were moved to Hornby Castle, Yorkshire after the castle was inherited from the D’Arcy family after the marriage of Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds (1751-1799) to Lady Amelia D’Arcy in 1773, daughter and sole heiress of the 4th Earl of Holderness. Kiveton Hall was built between 1694 and 1704 for Sir Thomas Osborne, Bt. (1632-1713), who quickly rose through the ranks of the peerage being created Barons Osborne of Kiveton and Viscount Latimer of Danby (1673), Earl of Danby (1674) and was made Knight of the Garter (1677); following the revolution, he was made Marquess of Carmarthen in 1689 and in 1694, was made Duke of Leeds. A group of gilt-gesso furniture including a daybed and sofa bearing the arms of the Duke of Leeds, now in the collection at Temple Newsam House and attributed to Philip Guibert (or Gilbert) correspond to two gilt-gesso tables listed in the inventory of 1727 in the ‘Great Bedchamber’ and ‘South-East Bedchamber’ at Kiveton which bear the Duke’s coronet and cypher DL for the Duke of Leeds. The two tables were moved to Hornby Castle in the 19th century after Kiveton’s demolition.

These chairs were photographed in situ at Buxted Park, Sussex in 1950 when they were in the collection of Basil Ionides, one of the most successful decorators of the period best known for the Savoy Theatre. Tragically, there was a fire at Buxted on 2 February 1940, which left the house a gutted shell. Ten years later, Ionides had re-built the interior of the House filling it with antiques and art either brought from his London house or newly bought to furnish the new interiors. (Worsley, op. cit., p. 92).