Supplied to Sir Jacob Astley, 3rd Bt. (1691-1760) for Melton Constable Hall, Norfolk, England
Thence by descent at Melton Constable with the Astley baronets and later the Barons Hastings until 1948, when the chairs were acquired with the house
Sold Christie’s, London, 23rd April 1998, Lot 30, GBP £194,000
The William F. Reilly Collection, New York, USA
Sold Christie’s, New York, 14th October 2009, Lot 115, Estimate: USD $250,000 - $400,000
Private Collection. California, USA
Literature
‘Melton Constable, Norfolk’, Country Life (16thSeptember 1905), pp. 378-84
Hussey, C., ‘Melton Constable, Norfolk – I & II’, Country Life (15th & 22nd September 1928), pp. 764–70, 402-9
COMPARE
A pair of walnut armchairs of similar form sold Christie’s, New York, 16th April 2002, Lot 155, USD $196,500
Publications
Hussey, C., ‘Needlework Furniture at Melton Constable’, Country Life (6th October 1928), p. 480, fig. 6
DOCUMENTATION
The present chairs and suite recorded in the surviving inventories of 1799, 1860 and 1901 of Melton Constable Hall, see Harding, G. and H., Catalogue of the Ornamental Furniture, Works of Art, and Porcelain, at Melton Constable Hall, Norfolk (London, 1901), p. 8
A pair of George II carved walnut and burr walnut armchairs, the classical vase-shaped splats veneered with richly figured burr walnut, carved with roundels between similarly veneered shaped uprights; the serpentine armrests and supports issuing boldly carved scrolls above veneered seat rails with drop-in seats; the elegant back legs ending in pad feet and the cabriole front legs headed with the Astley family crest of five ostrich feathers issued from a ducal coronet flanked by acanthus leaves and terminating in hairy paw feet
The set of six armchairs and fifteen side chairs supplied to Sir Jacob Astley (1691-1760), 3rd Bt., for Melton Constable Hall, Norfolk is one of the great suites of walnut seat furniture produced in the eighteenth century. Replete with classical ornament and carved with the heraldic device, the chairs celebrate the ancient lineage of the Astley family. The recognised founder of the family fortunes, Sir Thomas de Astley (1215-65) of Astley Castle and Hillmorton, Warwickshire, summoned to Parliament as Baron Astley in 1253, was killed at the battle of Evesham in 1265. He acquired the estate of Melton Constable by his second marriage in 1236 to Editha, daughter and heiress of Peter Constable of Melton Constable.
Although the possession of the Astley family since the early thirteenth century, the present manor of Melton Constable was built from 1664 by Sir Jacob Astley (1640-1729), 1st Bt., grandfather of the third baronet. His Carolean house – for he likely acted as his own architect – is one of the most important of its date in the country, part of the small group of fine mid-late seventeenth-century houses comprising Coleshill, Kingston Lacy, Clarendon, Stoke Edith and Belton that exemplifies this distinctively English architectural style, called the only truly vernacular English style of architecture to have developed since the Tudor period.
The present chairs were made for the Eating Room, now the Red Drawing Room, of the present Melton Constable Hall. The spectacular plaster ceiling, dated 1687, bears the quartered arms of the family’s founder Sir Thomas, placed by the first baronet in the pediment of the south front, as well as the same baronet’s cypher and singular crest of five feathers rising from a ducal coronet which, some fifty years later, was repeated on the knees of the present chairs, as it was again in the pediment of the connecting Gallery, built by the fifth baronet in 1810. The ceiling also features panels of boldly modelled and undercut game-birds, partridges and pheasants, flowers, bunches of grapes and other fruit, reflecting the original function of the room.
The present chairs were made for the third baronet, Sir Jacob, in the 1730s. A man of strong artistic interests, he was a keen musician and carried out extensive remodelling of Melton Constable. Sir Jacob is depicted playing the cello in a group portrait of 1734 by the Norwich painter, Heins, which may capture the original interior of the Chapel, converted by him into the Saloon. In 1721 he married Lucy, the sister and coheiress of Sir Henry le Strange of Hunstanton, which brought to the Astleys the claim to the ancient barony of Hastings, subsequently revived in their favour, and which had, in fact, been created in 1264 by writ from Sir Simon de Montfort, the man with whom the family founder Sir Thomas sided in 1265 at Evesham.
Of stately proportions, boldly carved on the arms with scrolls and ornamented with the motifs of antiquity, the present armchairs symbolise the magnificence of the period in which William Kent was aggrandising Britain’s new Palladian mansions with interiors of the most splendid Italian Baroque. Roman acanthus leaves flank each ducal coronet, the splats take the shape of classical vases, and the legs terminate in hairy lion’s paws, celebrating the great Bacchus, Roman god of wine and revelry, who was often depicted riding wild cats in reliefs and other iconography.
A stylistic tour de force, the present chairs encapsulate the rich and ancient history not only of the Astley family and Melton Constable, but to a significant degree the history of England.