A George II Giltwood Mirror, Circa 1750

Property of Hyde Park Antiques

The crest centered by a heraldic cartouche

height 100 in.; width 48 ½ in.
254 cm.; 123 cm.

Provenance

Probably William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1722-1791), either at 5 St James's Square, London, or Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire;
Christie's New York, 14 October 1989, lot 185

Literature

Graham Child, World Mirrors 1650-1900, London 1990, p. 109 fig. 122

Catalogue note

The heraldic element of a griffin statant with coronet of an Earl corresponds to the crest of William Wentworth, who became 2nd Earl of Strafford 2nd creation following the death of his father Thomas, 1st Earl Strafford 2nd creation and 3rd Baron Raby, in 1739. Wentworth was a peer in the House of Lords and appointed deputy lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1757. In 1741 Wentworth had married Lady Anne Campbell (d.1785), second daughter of John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll. Their seat was Wentworth Castle near Barnsley, Yorkshire, a Carolean edifice that the 1st Earl had remodelled in the Palladian manner in c.1711-24, and Wentworth, who had undertaken a Grand Tour and was an amateur architect himself, added a further neo-Palladian range along the south front in 1759-1764, described by his friend Horace Walpole as 'the most perfect taste in architecture, where grace softens dignity, and lightness attempers magnificence'. Wentworth also constructed a London townhouse to the designs of Matthew Brettingham the Elder at no. 5 St James's Square between 1748 and 1751.

The 2nd Earl died without issue in 1791 and was succeeded by his first cousin once removed Frederick Thomas Wentworth, 3rd Earl of Strafford, who also died without issue in 1799, following which the Strafford estates were divided among the descendants of three daughters of the 1st Earl, with Wentworth Castle devolving to the Vernon-Wentworth family who retained the property as their principal seat until the early 20th century, eventually selling the Castle to the Barnsley municipal authorities in 1948. An important group of paintings and furniture from the house had already been sold at Christie's in 1919, and further property removed from the Castle was sold by members of the Vernon-Wentworth family at Christie's during the 1950s, but the Hyde Park mirror does not appear among these lots. The St James's Square house passed by descent to the Byng family of Wrotham Park, Hertfordshire, who became Earls of Strafford of the 3rd creation in 1847 and owned the residence until 1968.

Stylistically this mirror exhibits characteristics of the earlier phase of the English rococo prior to the publication of the first edition of Thomas Chippendale's Director in 1754, and it likely corresponds in date to a suite of at least five carved and giltwood armchairs and a sofa retaining their original floral tapestry covering delivered to Wentworth Castle by the firm of Richard Wright and Edward Elwick in nearby Wakefield, for which a bill dated 1746 survives. The set was observed by Lady Northumberland during a 1760 visit to Wentworth where she admired 'French chairs emb'd [embroidered] with flowers upon Brown by the famous Mr Wright'. One pair from the group is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; a second pair was recently acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, and a single chair is in the Crab Tree Farm Collection, Lake Bluff, Illinois. It is highly likely that Wright & Elwick, the leading furniture manufacturers in the North of England during the mid-Georgian period, were major suppliers to the Second Earl of Strafford, as they were to numerous important Yorkshire clients, notably the Earl's cousins the Marquesses of Rockingham at neighbouring Wentworth Woodhouse. As such the Hyde Park mirror may well have formed part of a commission from the firm.