A pair of important George II walnut side chairs in the manner of William Hallett (c. 1735 English)

69.00 cm wide   99.00 cm high   70.00 cm deep

27.17 inches wide  38.98 inches high  27.56 inches deep

These important side chairs are executed in good quality walnut and stand on cabriole legs finely carved with acanthus leaves and with turned collars and ball and claw feet, with recessed castors. Now upholstered in blue and gold silk damask

English, circa 1735

Width: 27 ¼ in 69 cm
Depth: 27 ½ in 70 cm
Height: 39 in 99 cm

This pair of chairs bears strong similarities to the work of William Hallett, one of the most successful gentrified cabinet makers of the second quarter of the eighteenth century, and was described by the furniture historians Ralph Edwards and Margaret Jourdain as ‘probably the most fashionable cabinet maker of the George II reign’

The use of the turned collar above the claw and ball feet is evident in much of the work produced from his workshops, which were based at Great Newport Street, Long Acre, London.

William Hallett had a lifestyle that could be described as flamboyant. A self-made man from Somerset, he made and married into enough money to build himself a country house in about 1750, on the site of Cannons, the former Middlesex seat of the 1st Duke of Chandos.

In the early 1750s, the family had become so prosperous that Hallett’s son, also called William, had his portrait painted with his future wife Elizabeth by the celebrated landscape and portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). This picture named The Morning Walk now hangs in the National Gallery, London

Halletts clients included Arthur, 6th Viscount Irwin who in 1735 commissioned a set of almost identical walnut chairs. These were made in August 1735 originally for Viscount Irwin's house in Grosvenor Square, London, yet were moved to his country seat, Temple Newsham, Leeds, upon his death in 1736.

An almost identical pair of chairs is also illustrated in Ralph Edwards; English Chairs, London 1970
3rd ed, no 56.

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