A Danish Neoclassical Walnut Armchair, designed by Georg Christian Hilker, Copenhagen, Second Quarter 19th Century

Christie's London, 15 November 2001, lot 152

Christie's London, 27 April 2006, lot 172

The Danish artist Georg Christian Hilke (1807-1875) was an important figure in the Danish Golden Age, who trained at the Danish Royal Academy and spent a year studying in Rome and Naples. He often collaborated with his fellow painter Constatin Hansen (1804-1880) and received numerous important commissions including decorative schemes at the Thorvaldsen Museum, the University of Copenhagen and the Christiansborg and Amalienborg Palaces, working primarily in a Neo-Pompeiian and later Neo-Renaissance style. A portrait of Hilker by his compatriot Christen Købke is in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Like several of his fellow neoclassical painters both in Denmark and abroad such as Jacques-Louis David, Hilke also occasionally provided furniture designs inspired by Ancient Greek and Roman prototypes, and an undated drawing by Hilker with three chairs designs including one that corresponds almost exactly to the present lot is in the collection of the Danish Royal Academy, illustrated in Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen, The Dream of a Golden Age: Danish Neo-Classical Furniture, 1790-1850 (Humlebæk 2004), fig.273, and another chair of this model in a private collection is illustrated fig.277 p.281. Interestingly, one of Hilker's professors at the Royal Academy, the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund (1786-1840) designed a very similar form of armchair, an example of which is in the Kunstindustrimuseet, Copenhagen, and another pair was sold Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 29 September 2016, lot 1252.