minutely the character of the objects that were to be found in the house
of a noble lady who moved in the highest court circles during the reign
of Queen Anne. The list of pictures that she left to her grandson has
not been reproduced here; they were principally family portraits, and
other pictures by the celebrated French painters of the early part of
the reign of Louis XIV. These pictures, of course, had been brought over
to England when the Marquise was exiled. Considering, however, that she
had lived for thirty years in London till her death in 1722, the great
bulk of the furniture in the above inventory must have been “Queen
Anne.”
A study of the items, however, shows that some of them, especially those
marked very old, were purely Louis XIV. Others, especially the chairs
that matched the beds, were probably of the Marot school.
The Oriental goods are particularly noticeable, especially the lacquer
screens and Indian stuffs. The china also shows that the Marquise
followed the prevailing taste. It is to be noted that there is no
mention of mahogany, and the wood that appears to be most in favour is
the Calembour. This is otherwise known as eagle wood, a sweet-scented
species of aloes that comes from the East.
The Dutch influence that prevailed during this period naturally resulted
in marquetry coming into very high favour. The ordinary cabinet woods
were inlaid in geometrical, floral and animal patterns with the warmer
and more beautiful tints of the exotic woods. Complete pictures were
often formed on broad surfaces, such as table tops, and narrower
surfaces were also decorated in this manner. Plate XXIII., No. 7, shows
a small chest-of-drawers, or dressing-table, of this period, with inlaid
floral ornamentation on the legs. This dates from about the beginning of
the Queen Anne period. Typical objects of this class, dating between
1690 and 1710, are described as follows:
[Illustration: PLATE XXIII]
A dressing-table veneered with walnut containing three drawers with
brass handles has the faces of the drawers inlaid with boxwood and
ebony. A band of inlay also ornaments the top. The four legs are
cabriole with web feet. A dressing-table, contains two deep drawers and
a central one with brass key-plates and handles. On the lower side the
front is cut into three cusps with two pendants between them. A
chest-of-drawers, veneered with walnut, contains two short drawers and
three long ones, inlaid on their faces with narrow strips of sycamore
and rosewood. Around the top is a deep cornice, below which is a deep
rounded moulding forming the face of a drawer in front. The chest is
placed on a stand, containing three drawers, upon short turned legs. The
front is cut into cusps and curves on the lower side. Another
chest-of-drawers veneered, contains three long drawers below and two
small drawers above, and a shallow drawer in the stand upon which the
chest rests. The chest is surmounted by a cornice and the stand by a
moulding. The lower part is cut into three circular arches, with a
decorative beading. The feet are four square piers resting upon turned
discs. Each side is cut into a flat arch without beading. Another
chest-of-drawers contains five drawers, with handles and key-plates of
_or moulu_, the whole of walnut decorated with inlaid arabesque
ornaments in oval medallions. A combination dressing-table and secretary
with a swinging glass, the whole of walnut, decorated with beading and
moulding. The dressing-table stands on four cabriole legs carved with a
shell ornament. The looking-glass of walnut slightly carved and gilt,
the glass bevelled at the edges.
Of cabinets, we may note a walnut cabinet supported on four spirally
turned legs with curved stretchers, opening with two doors and furnished
with brass lock-plates. A cabinet of oak standing on large turned feet.
It has a flat top with a slightly overhanging moulded edge. At the top
is a drawer and below it two doors shutting in six drawers. The drawers
and doors are panelled and moulded, with turned ebonized handles in the
centre of each panel. The sides of the cabinet are also panelled. A
cabinet of various kinds of wood, on a stand of oak with four spirally
turned legs and stretchers of the same. The outside doors veneered with
pollard oak, the centre with hexagonal pieces of thorn acacia. Eleven
drawers are enclosed within. The cornice is of pear-wood at the sides
and walnut in front, the drawers at the top below the cornice are of
burr walnut.
Two dressing-tables from engravings of the day are shown in Nos. 1 and
3, Plate XXIII. No. 1. is properly draped with the toilet, usually
muslin, but often of richer material. On the same plate, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4
and 5, are details both of simple and more ornate mirrors of this style.
No. 5 is especially good with its carvings, gildings and inlaid leaf
ornamentation. The glasses in the mirrors were gradually increasing in
size as the manufacturers became more skillful. Nos. 2 and 3, Plate
XIX., show two oval mirrors of different proportions. No. 3 is a
specially fine example, as it shows so many of the contemporary
decorative motives, including the mascaron, shell, _chute_, swag, scroll
and wings.
The handles for cabinets, chests-of-drawers, etc., were of various
shapes, but the brass drop-handle was the most usual. Its length for
average drawers was two inches. The ordinary model is reproduced in No.
6, Plate XXIII.
The tables still retained the late Jacobean characteristics shown in No.
8, Plate XXIII. Far more common, however, were the so-called
“thousand-legged” tables with round or square leaves and horse legs. The
legs were becoming slimmer and still connected with the centre frame by
stretchers close to the ground.
The display of china had developed a new piece of furniture. Dyche thus
defines it in 1748: “Buffet, a handsome open cupboard or repository for
plate, glasses, china, etc., which are put there either for ornament or
convenience of serving the table,” and Chambers, 1751:
“Beaufait, Buffet, or Bufet, was anciently a little apartment separated
from the rest of the room by slender wooden columns, for the disposing
china and glassware, etc., also called a _cabinet_. It is now, properly,
a large table in a dining-room, called also a sideboard, for the plate,
glasses, bottles, basons, etc., to be placed, as well for the service of
the table as for magnificence. The buffet, among the Italians, called
_credenza_, within a balustrade, elbow-high.”
Sometimes the “beaufait” consisted of a tier of shelves built into a
niche in the wall of the dining-room. Even in the Queen Anne period,
however, the word was sometimes used to signify a table. Murray quotes
(1718): “The plate was placed upon a table or buffett.” The word in the
sense of sideboard as we know it to-day came from France. In 1710
D’Aviler says: “Bufet; in a vestibule or a dining-room, a large table
with stages in the style of a credence upon which are displayed the
vases, the basins, and the cristal as much for the service at the table
as for magnificence. This Bufet, which the Italians calls credence, is
with them usually placed in the great _salon_ and closed in by a
balustrade breast high. Those belonging to princes and cardinals stand
under a daïs of cloth.”
THE EARLY GEORGIAN PERIOD
[Illustration: PLATE XXIV]
[Illustration]
THE EARLY GEORGIAN PERIOD
The Early Georgian Period covers an interval of about forty years,—from
the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714 to the appearance of
Chippendale’s _The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director_ in 1754.
During this period, strange to say, the art of the Regency and Louis
XV., though not unfelt, has not so much influence as a spurious Gothic
revival, an equally spurious “Chinese” furore and a fetish worship of
Palladio and Classic architecture.
The commanding figures in the taste of the day were William Kent,
Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington, and John Talman. Kent and
Talman studied in Rome under the Chevalier Luti. When the Society of
Antiquaries was established in its present form in 1718, Talman was
appointed its first director. He died in 1726. Kent attracted the
attention of the Earl of Burlington, and from 1716 to 1748, when Kent
died, he received the shelter and hospitality of the Earl’s town house.
Kent’s charming personality, and the authority he assumed in art matters
in consequence of his foreign training, enabled him to win a high
position in fashionable circles. He soon became the arbiter of taste.
Horace Walpole testifies: “He was not only consulted for furniture, as
frames of pictures, glasses, tables, chairs, etc., but for plate, for a
barge, for a cradle. And so impetuous was fashion that two great ladies
prevailed on him to make designs for their birthday gowns. The one he
dressed in a petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders; the
other, like a bronze, in a copper-coloured satin with ornaments of
gold.” Walpole also says: “Kent’s style predominated during his life.”
Besides the numerous mansions he built for the nobility in the Classic
style, he also built a “Gothic” house for Henry Pelham.
Pope says:
“_Must bishops, lawyers, statesmen, have the skill
To build, to plan, judge paintings, what you will?
Then why not Kent as well our treaties draw,
Bridgman explain the gospel, Gibbs the law?_”[15]
Kent was a painter, architect and general designer, and nobody has been
found to oppose Hogarth’s dictum that neither England nor Italy ever
produced a more contemptible dauber. Hogarth satirizes him in two of his
prints: _Masquerades and Operas_ (1724), and _The Man of Taste_ (1732).
In the former, the statue of Kent surmounts Burlington Gate, and
supported on a lower level by the statues of Raphael and Michael Angelo;
in the latter, he again towers above the same two artists over the gate
(of taste), which is being whitewashed. On a scaffolding Alexander
Pope’s diminutive form is wielding the brush and spattering passers-by
with the whitewash. The Duke of Chandos gets most of it. The Earl of
Burlington is mounting the ladder with more material.
Burlington House, Piccadilly, was practically rebuilt about 1716 from
the Earl’s plans. It formed a striking exception to the mixed and
commonplace architecture of the period, and aroused the enthusiasm of
contemporary writers. Gay writes: “Beauty within, without proportion
reigns.” Lord Hervey, however, sneers at its lack of accommodation:
“_Possessed of one great hall of state
Without a room to sleep or eat._”
This mordant wit also satirizes another residence at Chiswick owned by
Lord Burlington, which was built about 1730 after the model of the
celebrated villa of the worshipped Palladio. According to Hervey’s, “It
was too small to live in and too large to hang to a watch.” Burlington
designed mansions for others also. One of these, belonging to General
Wade, in Cook Street, provoked Walpole to say: “It is worse contrived in
the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty in front.” Lord
Chesterfield also suggested: “As the general could not live in it to his
ease, he had better take a house over against it and look at it.”
The discomfort of the interior arrangement of even the most magnificent
houses built at the beginning of this period is attested by more than
one writer. Pope sneers at Blenheim as follows:
“_See, sir, here’s the grand approach,
This way is for his Grace’s coach;
There lies the bridge, and here’s the clock,
Observe the lion and the cock,
The spacious court, the colonnade!
The chimneys are so well designed,
They never smoke in any wind.
The gallery’s contrived for walking,
The windows to retire and talk in.
The council chamber for debate,
And all the rest are rooms of state.
Thanks, sir, cried I, ’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep, or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling
That ’tis a house but not a dwelling._”
How strong the fashionable taste of the day was for Gothic, Chinese and
French decorations is gathered from the indignant writings of
contemporaries who could not bear to see their pet Classic neglected. We
learn that by the middle of the century the craze for the French and
Chinese had somewhat abated. In 1756, Isaac Ware has much to say on the
late tendencies. He speaks bitterly of the degeneracy of modern taste,
and attacks those who “flew into every absurdity that the scope of
things could afford. Of this we see instances in many expensive works
which stand, and will stand to disgrace our country: and we have models
of them, and of others as ridiculous, proposed for imitation.... We have
seen architecture, a science founded upon the soundest principles,
disgraced by ignorant caprice, and fashion very lately attempted, and it
would be well if we could not say attempts now, to undermine and destroy
it by the caprice of France, and by the whims of China.
[Illustration: PLATE XXV]
“How must a man of true taste frown to see in some of the best buildings
of that country, as it would pretend for the encouragement of arts,
Corinthian capitals made of cocks’ heads. It is called the French
(order) and let them have the praise of it; the Gothic shafts and
Chinese bells are not below or beyond it in poorness of imagination.
“It is our misfortune to see at this time (1756) an unmeaning scrawl of
(Cs) inverted, turned and hooked together take place of Greek and Roman
elegance, even in our most expensive decorations. This is not because
the possessor thinks there is or can be elegance in such fond, weak,
ill-jointed and unmeaning figures: it is usually because it is French;
and fashion commands that whatever is French is to be admired as fine.
“While these French decorations were driving out from the inside of our
houses those ceilings which a Burlington had taught us to introduce from
Roman temples, and those ornaments of doors which a better taste under
Inigo Jones had formed upon the models of the best Roman structures; the
Goths seemed to have seized upon pavilions, and the Chinese on rooms of
pleasure. The jointed columns rose without proportion for the support of
the thatched roof in some lower ground, while bells dangled from every
corner of the edifice that caught the traveller’s eye upon an elevation.
“True taste and good admonitions have got the better of these; and they
are left for cake-houses for Sunday apprentices. The French are more
difficult to conquer; but let us rouse in every sense the natural spirit
against them; and no more permit them to deprave our taste in this noble
science, than to introduce among us miseries of their government or
fooleries of their religion.”
Again he says:
“The French have furnished us with abundance of fanciful decorations for
these purposes (ceilings and panels) little less barbarous than the
Gothic; and they were, like that species of building (for we will not
descend to call it architecture) received with great readyness; the art
seemed upon the point of being lost in England; but a better taste has
now prevailed. We should, in that danger, have declared for banishing
whatever came under the denomination of French ornament; but, now we see
it over, the art will be to receive these ornaments with discretion, to
adapt them to the few uses for which they are proper, and to soften
their luxurious use, and blend them with better figures, till we have
reduced them into a more decent appearance.
“A ceiling straggled over with arched lines, twisted curves, with X’s,
C’s and tangled semi-circles, may please the light eye of the French,
who seldom carry their observation farther than a casual glance; but
this alone is poor, fantastical and awkward; it is a strange phrase to
use for anything from France, but those who have seen such ceilings as
we here describe must acknowledge it is just.”
He then goes on to recommend a ceiling which the plate shows to be Louis
XV. in style.
Here then we have direct evidence of the favour in which the styles of
the Regency had been received in England. The _rocaille_ decoration and
the excessive use of Chinese subjects, and monkeys, arabesques and
floral devices, and particularly the broken curve, quickly overcame the
opposition encountered from conservative members of the old school and
strongly influenced Germany and England.
The expensive French wall-painting and silken hangings are imitated in
wall-paper. The taste even spread to America, for Mr. Hancock, of
Boston, sent to London in 1736 for paper-hangings for one of the rooms
of his new house. He says about three or four years ago one of his
friends had a hanging like the sample he sends, but he adds, “If they
can make it more beautiful by adding more birds flying here and there,
with some landskips at the bottom, should like it well. Let the ground
be the same colour of the pattern. At the top and bottom was a narrow
border of about 2 inches wide, which would have to mine.... In the other
part of these hangings are great variety of different sorts of birds,
peacocks, macoys, squirril, monkys, fruit and flowers, etc.”
The macoys (which, of course, are macaws or parrots) and the monkeys
proclaim the Regency taste.
Some characteristics of the Regency style are as follows: The legs of
the furniture are slightly curved and not so heavy as the Louis XIV.
furniture. However, they retain a look of solidity. Round the edge of
the table, under the top, is usually a frieze which forms a descending
curve in the middle; it sometimes assumes the form of a bow also. This
has been called the _contour d’arbalète_. At the top of the legs, and on
the corners of other pieces of furniture, are mountings of bronze often
showing acanthus motives with a head which is more expressive than the
antique mascarons of the preceding style. Sometimes heads of animals
also appear. The scroll and shell-work is rapidly becoming ornate. A
fine example of Regency work is shown in the lower screen on Plate XXX.,
in which the prevailing vogue of the monkey is noticeable. Besides
Watteau, Chinese designs were also produced by Aubert (d. 1721), La Joüe
(d. 1752), Fraisse (d. 1735), and Mondon _le fils_ (d. 1738). Roumier
(d. 1724) designed tables of this period.
The French school, which Chippendale was going to follow almost
slavishly in his book of designs, had many admirers in England long
before. In 1740, Batty Langley brought out _The City and Country
Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs_. In this and other works,
he gives several hundred designs for buffets, chimney-pieces, cisterns,
clocks, table-frames, etc. Some of these are confessedly “after the
French manner.” Of these, we have the curious chest-of-drawers on Plate
XXVIII., the dressing-table on Plate XXVI. and the clock and bookcase on
Plate XXV.
After examining Batty’s dressing-table and chest-of-drawers, the latter
of which he has even neglected to supply with handles, we are astonished
to come across anything so graceful as the console-table on Plate XXVI.,
which also appears in his book. However, in our examination of French
designs, we come across this very table signed Picau, so that Mr.
Langley has shamelessly transferred a French design to his own book
without acknowledgment, as Picau considerably antedated Langley. The
influence of the French decoration is also noticeable in the bookcase,
No. 1, Plate XXV.
Langley thus catered to some extent to the tastes of those who admired
the French styles, but he did not approve of them himself. He says:
“The great pleasure that builders and workmen of all kinds (those called
cabinet-makers, I think, only excepted) have of late years taken in the
study of architecture has induced me to the compiling of this work. And
indeed I am very sorry that cabinet-makers should have been supine
therein; because of all small architectural works none is more
ornamental to buildings than theirs, when well and justly executed, as
being generally made with such kinds of materials which Nature has
wantonly adorned with delightful textures of colours that contribute
very greatly to their beauty.
“The evil genius that so presides over cabinet-makers as to direct them
to persevere in such a pertinacious and stupid manner that the rules of
architecture, from whence all beautiful proportions are deduced, are
unworthy of their regard, I am at a loss to discover; except Murcea, the
Goddess of Sloth, acts that part and has thus influenced them to conceal
their dronish, lowlife incapacities and prompt them, with the fox in the
fable, to pronounce grapes sour that ripen out of their reach.
“Cabinet-makers originally were no more than spurious indocile chips,
expelled by joiners for the superfluity of their sap, and also, by
instilling stupid notions and prejudice to architecture into the minds
of youth educated under them has been the cause that at this time ’tis a
very great difficulty to find one in fifty of them that can make a
book-case, etc., indispensably true after any of the Five Orders without
being obliged to go to a joiner for to set out the work and make his
templets to work by.
“But if these gentlemen persist much longer thus to despise the study of
this noble art, the very basis and soul of their trade, which now to
many joiners is well understood, they will soon find the bad
consequences of so doing and have time enough on their hands to repent
of their folly—and more especially since that our nobility and gentry
delight themselves now more than ever in the study of architecture,
which enables them to distinguish good work and workmen from assuming
pretenders.”
On Plate XXV. are three of his eight designs of bookcases, which, “if
executed by a good joiner, and with beautiful materials, will have good
effects, or even if by a cabinet-maker, provided that he understands how
to proportion and work the Five Orders, which at this time, to the shame
of that trade be it spoken, there is not one in a hundred that ever
employed a moment’s thought thereon, or knows the Tuscan from the Doric,
or the Corinthian from the Composite Order, and more especially if the
Doric freeze hath its triglyphs and mutules omitted. In short, the
ultimate knowledge of these sort of workmen is generally seen to finish
with a monstrous Cove, on an Astragal, crowned with a Cima Reversa, in
an open pediment of stupid height.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI]
“When a Gentleman applies himself with a good design of a book-case,
etc., made by an able architect, to most of the masters in this trade,
they instantly condemn it and allege that ’tis not possible to make
cabinet works look well that are proportioned by the Rules of
Architecture; because, they say, the members will be too large and
heavy, etc., whereas the real truth is that they do not understand how
to proportion and work the members of these designs, and therefore
advise the unwary to accept of such stuff as their poor, crazy
capacities will enable them to make, and wherein ’tis always seen that
the magnitudes of their Coves and Cima Reversas (their darling
finishing) are much larger members than any members of a regular cornice
(even of the Tuscan Order) of the same height, wherefore, ’tis evident
that all their assertions of this kind are used for nothing more than to
conceal an infinite fund of stubborn ignorance which cannot be
paralleled by any other set of mortals in the world. This I mention that
for the future Gentlemen may have a more particular regard in the choice
of works and workmen, in this way, than any have heretofore done. For I
do affirm that a good joiner will not only execute a design of this
nature in much less time than any of the common run of cabinet-makers
can, but will perform it in that masterly manner which is known but to
very few, if any, in the cabinet trade.”
Isaac Ware, who, as we have seen, was a determined enemy to the French
innovations, says: “We shall here direct the eye of the student from the
frivolous decorations which France has furnished us to those which
dignified the works of Greece and Rome, and have been an honour to the
names of some of our own architects in times of better taste.” Though he
prefers the nobler style of Inigo Jones, he advises the architect “to
consider the other kind of richness. We consider the proprietor dislikes
the former kind; he thinks it too heavy, or he has corrupted his taste
in France so far as to dislike the Grecian science. He desires to have a
ceiling as rich as that proposed to him, but more airy; and he will have
some of the French crooked figures introduced into it.”