拍品专文
These tables and the mirror that is the preceding lot are designed en suite with the famous painted armchairs from Woodhall that were sold from the house by the Executors of the late Abel Henry Smith, Esq., Sotheby's London, 13 March 1931, lot 101, and which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (W.18-1931, see: Georgian Funriture, London, 1947, pl.69). On its own this stylistic connection firmly supports the likely provenance, but combined with the fragment of a letter pasted underneath one of the tables in the following lot the provenance seems incontestable. Solomon Gubbay was collecting in the period when these tables are likely to have been sold from Woodhall. It seems less likely that the provenance given in the letter would be wrong so soon after they were bought; the 'Henry' referred to is the architectural writer, H. Avray Tipping, who died in 1933. The letter at least implies that Avray Tipping is still alive and this gives a terminus ante quem of 1933 for the purchase of the tables by Mr. Gubbay. The tables were not in a small Christie's sale in 1920, nor in either of the large dispersals in 1931 and they so were probably sold between these two dates.
They are likely to have been designed under the direction of his architect Sir Thomas Leverton (d.1824). The ribbon-twined frames of the mirror, the tables and the chairs are designed in keeping with the contempory fashion for beribboned dressing-tables and were painted in the 'Etruscan' fashion and embellished with laurel-wreathed 'print' medallions. The mirror's medallion of mural-crowned Cybele, the Phrygian Earth Mother personifying the element Earth, is in the manner of Piazzetta. It would have been supplied by the print-dealer R. Parker, who assisted with the decoration of the 'Engraving Room'. This was on the principal floor and Parker also provided a catalogue of the prints in the room. A prospectus for sale, drawn up in 1799, also noted the first floor dressing-room as being 'Ornamented with Prints' and the small scale and character of these lots and the chairs, which have caned seats, suggests that they were supplied for the dressing-room and not for the larger scale Engraving Room (see: F. Russell, 'Microcosm of 18th-Century Taste, The Engravings Room at Woodhall Park', Country Life, 6 October 1977, pp. 924-6)
They are likely to have been designed under the direction of his architect Sir Thomas Leverton (d.1824). The ribbon-twined frames of the mirror, the tables and the chairs are designed in keeping with the contempory fashion for beribboned dressing-tables and were painted in the 'Etruscan' fashion and embellished with laurel-wreathed 'print' medallions. The mirror's medallion of mural-crowned Cybele, the Phrygian Earth Mother personifying the element Earth, is in the manner of Piazzetta. It would have been supplied by the print-dealer R. Parker, who assisted with the decoration of the 'Engraving Room'. This was on the principal floor and Parker also provided a catalogue of the prints in the room. A prospectus for sale, drawn up in 1799, also noted the first floor dressing-room as being 'Ornamented with Prints' and the small scale and character of these lots and the chairs, which have caned seats, suggests that they were supplied for the dressing-room and not for the larger scale Engraving Room (see: F. Russell, 'Microcosm of 18th-Century Taste, The Engravings Room at Woodhall Park', Country Life, 6 October 1977, pp. 924-6)