| |
Both date from the late eighteenth century, and one has always been
in the house, though moved from another room.
Pictures
The room is mainly hung with portraits, including three by Reynolds, acquired
by the 1st Lord Faringdon in the 1890s. The portrait of the Countess of
Coventry (10) is a comparatively early work of 1764. The two sentimental
subjects of the Beggar Boy (17) and Mercury (15), a decade later, show
a different, and less usual, facet of Reynoldss character
fanciful rather
than austerely classical. Over the chimney-piece, Gainsboroughs
monochromatic Landscape (16), bought by the 2nd Lord Faringdon in 1935,
may be one of the two pictures sent to the Academy in 1772, which Horace
Walpole described as very great effect, but neat, like needlework.
Furniture and Ceramics
As in the Hall beyond, most of the furniture here is of the Regency period,
much of it incorporating the brass inlay fashionable at the time. This
decoration, harking back to the tradition of Boulle, can be seen on the
large rosewood sofa table at the western end of the room, and the pair
of rosewood card tables, with elegant lyre-shaped supports, made by the
leading cabinet-makers of the day, Gillows of Lancaster. The eight single
chairs with sabre legs, grained to simulate rosewood, exemplify a type
of painted decoration characteristic of the period.
The mahogany dwarf bookcases on the left-hand (north) side of the room
are also English, though in a more openly French style, with gilt-bronze
mounts, and the motif of crossed spears familiar from the engravings of
Percier and Fontaine. In form, they share much in common with the side
cabinet made by James Newton for Belton House, Lincolnshire, around 1807.
Between the windows is a pair of rosewood cabinets with marble tops and
gilt monopodia. The chandelier is a good example of a Regency glass lustre,
and the gilt pelmet boards, with elaborate scrolls terminating in eagles
heads, are of the same period, moved here from the drawing room at Barnsley
Park, when Nash carried out his alterations there in 1810.
The large painted vase on the sofa table is Bloor Derby of about 1820;
the hexagonal famille rose vases on the dwarf bookcases are Chinese of
the Qianlong period (173695), while much of the blue and white porcelain
here, and on the card tables, dates from the earlier Kangxi reign (16621722).
Sculpture and Metalwork
On the dwarf bookcase at the far end of the room are two nineteenth-century
Italian bronzes depicting David (after Michelangelo) and Antinous (after
the Antique). A silver-gilt ewer, by Boucheron of Paris, and an Empire
ormolu figure of Napoleon as First Consul, stand on one of the card tables.
A bronze statuette of the Young Bacchus, by J M Swan, RA (18471910),
can be seen on the near bookcase. The inkstand on the sofa table is hallmarked
1813, though foreshadowing, in a surprising way, some of the motifs of
the late Art Nouveau. The table also supports a nineteenth-century Neapolitan
bronze of the Young Bacchus (originally known as Narcissus), after an
Antique bronze excavated at Pompeii in 1862, the last such find to gain
celebrity through reproduction. To the right of the door leading back
into the Hall is a bronze head of Lady Faringdon, standing on a mahogany
torchère, commissioned in 1996 by the partners of Cazenove &
Co., and sculpted by Philomena Davidson-Davis.
|