A Prince's Treasure
120 objects from the Royal Collection return to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton
ATTRIBUTED TO FRANÇOIS HERVÉ (ACTIVE 1781-96)
Side chair
c. 1790Giltwood, white-painted wood and silk damask | 91.5 x 52.7 x 49.5 cm (whole object) | RCIN 31831
Set of side chairs; each with rectangular back with an pearl-edged oval-framed bow and arrow splat carved with a wreath of flowers, the rectangular reeded uprights tied with ribbon, on square tapering legs with beaded edge, the seat covered in striped green silk
It is not known when these chairs first entered the Royal Collection, in fact it seems that one of the earliest records of their existence in a Royal residence is, rather unusually, at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, where chairs of a very similar design are depicted in Nash's engraving of the Music Room Gallery of 1824, surrounded by Chinese vases and other Orientalia. Their highly sophisticated design (the front seat-rail is slightly angled), bold neo-classical ornament and characteristic near-impossibility of actual use, suggest they may have been created by the émigré chair maker François Hervé, employed at Carlton House during the early stages of its evolution, when the Prince of Wales surrounded himself with French craftsmen and agents of great sophistication, as well as the Francophile British architect Henry Holland. That chairs designed in this extreme classicising manner could be combined with the Oriental excesses at Brighton in the 1820s is a fine demonstration of George IV's sometimes surprising furnishing combinations.
It is not known when these chairs first entered the Royal Collection, in fact it seems that one of the earliest records of their existence in a Royal residence is, rather unusually, at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, where chairs of a very similar design are depicted in Nash's engraving of the Music Room Gallery of 1824, surrounded by Chinese vases and other Orientalia. Their highly sophisticated design (the front seat-rail is slightly angled), bold neo-classical ornament and characteristic near-impossibility of actual use, suggest they may have been created by the émigré chair maker François Hervé, employed at Carlton House during the early stages of its evolution, when the Prince of Wales surrounded himself with French craftsmen and agents of great sophistication, as well as the Francophile British architect Henry Holland. That chairs designed in this extreme classicising manner could be combined with the Oriental excesses at Brighton in the 1820s is a fine demonstration of George IV's sometimes surprising furnishing combinations.
