A pair of George II carved giltwood girandole wall mirrors, circa 1740, in the manner of William Ken

A pair of George II carved giltwood girandole wall mirrors, circa 1740, in the manner of William Kent

each oval mirror plate within a foliate-carved frame surmounted by a cresting with a displayed eagle resting on a handled vase with acorn- and oak-leaf-carved swags

167cm. high, 52cm. wide; 5ft. 5¾in., 1ft. 8½in.

Provenance

Reginald Mullins, Salisbury;
Parke-Bernet Galleries, 26-27-28 April 1956, lot 454;
Sotheby's, New York, In Celebration of the English Country House, 13 April 1996, lot 437.
Catalogue note

By the 1740s, the hefty Italianate grandeur of the Kentian style was no longer at its apex, but the playful and fluid Rococo style had also not yet established itself as the pronounced trend that it would become by the time Chippendale published his Director in 1754. These girandole mirrors arise from this decade of aesthetic flux, and like many artworks created in periods of transition, blends motifs and shapes in surprising and often unusual ways.

These girandole mirrors include several decorative motifs closely associated with William Kent, including the sizeable eagles carved with a typically sculptural sense of depth and movement. Acorn-studded oak boughs, too, are a signature of the Kentian style: they feature prominently, for instance, on a stool with a design attributed to Kent that was offered in these Rooms in the Treasures sale on 5^th July this year, lot 15. However, the comparison with the stool also demonstrates the divergences that these mirrors make from the classic William Kent style. While the mirror plates of these girandoles are egg-shaped, the antecedent Kentian style generally favoured geometric and architectural forms – Kentian mirrors tended to be rectangular with inset corners or of precise oval form. The treatment of the acanthus-leaf carving, too, is more free-flowing in this mirror than was previously common: while the leaf follows the line of the legs in the Kentian stool, they unfurl across the mirror plates on these girandoles in a way that looks forward to the far freer naturalism of the Rococo manner.

However, direct comparison with girandole mirrors in the Rococo style also reveals that these examples retain many of the characteristics of the Kentian style. Alongside the examples by Chippendale in the 1754 Director (plate CXL),¹ the most representatively Rococo of girandoles are those designed by Thomas Johnson: almost always asymmetrical, they abound with dripping icicles, architectural fragments and chinoiserie elements in various directions, as seen in his 1762 drawings at the V&A (acc. no. 28726:111). Contrasting these drawings with the present girandoles from over a decade earlier clearly indicates that the overall symmetry, the robustly-formed and rhythmically-carved candle arms and the Classical vase are all anchored in the Kentian style.

Though the design of these girandoles is quite distinctive and so few close comparable examples exist, there are some analogous examples of girandoles or mirrors that merge Kentian elements with the nascent spirit of Rococo. A George III girandole sold at Christie’s on 7^th July 1997 as lot 32 that similarly features curled tendrils around a heart-shaped mirror frame, but within a firmly symmetrical decorative scheme. The same can be said of the pair of mirrors sold at Christie’s London, 8^th July 1999 as lot 50, an example attributed to John Vardy. Indeed, Vardy is the most prominent designer of these mirrors in the transitional Kent-Rococo style; alongside comparable examples at auction,² there are numerous designs by Vardy held in the RIBA collection that demonstrate the flexibility of his design style (see, for instance, RIBA37260 and RIBA36490).

The curiously high area of carving on these girandoles in relation to the size of the mirror indicates that they were most likely created as part of a comprehensive interior scheme, and both the proportions of the room and the relation with other furnishings will have influenced this element of the design. On numerous occasions, William Kent made use of the long piers between paintings and windows to create additional vertical wall decoration: not only are there examples of giltwood sconces by Kent used in this way,³ but he also frequently includes them in the architectural trompe l’oeil paintings at residences such as Kensington Palace, Houghton Hall and Raynham Hall.<sup>4

1</sup> Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, Leeds, 2005 facsimile.

² Examples of the varied mirrors attributed to Vardy are Sotheby’s London, 14^th December 2021, lot 8, Sotheby’s London, 24^th October 2017, lot 205, and Christie’s New York, 19^th April 2023, lot 332

³ For two examples from Dorset House and Temple Newsam, see Susan Weber, ‘Kent and the Georgian Baroque Style in Furniture: Domestic Commissions’, in William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Susan Weber, New York, 2013, p.514.

⁴ Examples of each are pictured in Steven Brindle, ‘Kent the Painter’, in William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Susan Weber, New York, 2013, pp.110-149.