The Important DeWitt Family Pair of Classical Carved and Figured Mahogany Harp-Back Klismos Side Chairs, Attributed to Duncan Phyfe (1770-1854), New York, Circa 1815

William Radcliffe deWitt DD (1792-1867) and Mary Eleanor Wallace (1807-1881);

To their daughter, Catherine Van Vliet deWitt (1833-1904) and George Edward Sterry (1838-1908);

To their son, John deWitt Sterry (1865-1933);

To his cousin, Wallace deWitt (1889-1978);

To his son, Jon Sherman deWitt (1922-2004);

Thus by descent in the family.

This pair of chairs represents the apex of seating furniture design in New York during the Neo-Classical period. As Albert Sack stated "the symmetry achieved by integrating the asymmetrical harp into a conventional frame is a brilliant achievement."¹

The lyre-back or "harp banister with turned columns" as listed in the 1817 edition of the New York price book in Plate 6 illustration F was one of the most expensive options a cabinetmaker could offer. Furthermore, these chairs have their harps strung with brass and their front legs carved with paw feet and hair and topped with cross figured mahogany.²

It appears that at least eleven other chairs are known; a pair is in the collections of Winterthur Museum, one is in the collections of Bayou Bend Museum, one is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one is in a private collection, one is in the Kaufman collection at the National Gallery of Art, one is in the Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Stone collection, and a pair once belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Walter B. Jennings and a pair that sold at Sotheby's, New York, Important Americana, September 26, 2008, sale 8448, lot 57 that sold for $236,500.³

¹ Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture Early American, (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 63.

² Charles Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, (New York: Viking Press, 1966), pp. 129.

³ Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 74, pp. 128-9; David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection, (Houston, TX: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998), no. F193, p. 120; MMA (acc. no. 1972.136); Christie's, New York, The Collection of Ronald S. Kane, January 22, 1994, lot 388; Wendy Cooper, Classical Taste in America 1800-1840, (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), fig 70; Sack, New Fine Points, p. 63; Loan Exhibition of Eighteenth and Early nineteenth Century Furniture and Glass for the Benefit of The National Council of Girl Scouts, Inc., (New York: American Art Galleries, 1929), no. 797.