ATTRIBUTED TO PAUL SAUNDERS, CIRCA 1765

These armchairs are virtually identical to the set commissioned by the diplomat and politician Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness (1718-1778) as part of his refurbishment of Hornby Castle or Holderness (later Londonderry) House during the late 1750s. Holderness was an early patron of Samuel Norman (d.1759), cabinet-makers, carvers and gilders of St. Andrews Street, Soho, from 1755. Another likely maker is Paul Saunders, who received large payments from the 4th Earl for his work at the London house at Old Park Lane from 1754-58. The furniture may have been transferred to Hornby after Holderness House was sold to Lord Londonderry in 1819. The model bears a marked resemblance to furniture supplied by Saunders for Holkham (see R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p. 144, fig. 108). Hornby Castle was sold by the 11th Duke of Leeds in 1930 and a six-day sale of the contents ensued. The castle was demolished that same year; the chairs were not included in this sale.

The Aitken pair differs from the Hornby chairs in only minor details such as the flowerhead handholds and the bifurcated scroll toes. A gilt-embellished easy chair from Hornby of a related design ('from the same set') is illustrated in P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, ibid., fig. 133 and later sold Simon Sainsbury: The Creation of an English Arcadia; Christie's, London, 18 June 2008, lot 48. Another chair which was likely part of the Hornby/Holderness set was sold from the Estate of Janice Newman Rosenthal; Christie's, New York, 29 November 2012, lot 125.

SIR WILLIAM HENRY BENNETT
The chairs once belonged to Sir William Henry Bennett, a surgeon knighted for his services during the Boer War in South Africa and who later worked fully in for the Red Cross during World War I. He was a known collector and lived at no. 1 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair in 1911 (as per the Census), a house dating to 1820 that originally backed onto the garden of Chesterfield House. Thus Sir William never lived at Chesterfield House proper, which was the property of Lascelles/Earls of Harewood from 1922 until around the sale of its contents in 1932. By the time of his death in 1931, Sir William had moved to no. 3 Hyde Park Place, Marble Arch.