Nuneham Park, Oxfordshire, in 1913, with the chair in the centre foreground.
Courtesy of Country Life Picture Archive.
THE NUNEHAM PARK ARMCHAIR, English, circa 1765
Height of seat: 19¼ in; 49 cm
Width: 27¾ in; 70.5 cm
Depth: 28¼ in; 71.5 cm
A George III giltwood armchair designed by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and attributed to John Gordon.
Note: The chair retains most of the original oil gilded surface. The chair and the removable back frame are both incised with the roman numerals XIV.
The numbering of the chair frame suggests a larger set of at least fourteen chairs. Sadly no extra information about Gordon’s commission for the 1st Earl has come to light.
The design of this chair is virtually identical to the well documented suite of seat furniture supplied by Gordon to Spencer House in London between 1758 and 1765. The significant difference from the suite is the design of the side rails. The rails on the Spencer House suite feature a central motif repeated from the front, whilst the Nuneham Park suite does not repeat the central motif on the sides.
Both suites are today dispersed around the world. This chair is the only example from either suite to retain the original oil gilding, making it historically highly important.
Provenance
Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt, Nuneham Park, Oxfordshire, England;
Private collection, New York, USA.
Literature
Illustrated:
T. Herbert Warren, ‘Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire’, Country Life, 29 November 1913, pp. 746-55.
