The English Eighteenth Century Chimneypiece: Chimneypieces in the Bernard Quaritch ABA Book Fair 2018 Catalogue

Bernard Quaritch at the ABA Book Fair 2018 Catalogue.

https://docplayer.net/80056174-Aba-book-fair-london-2018.html

DESIGNS,INCLUDING FOR CHIMNEYPIECES.

A pencilled nineteenth-century bookseller’s inscription on the front paste down reads ‘a series of Beautiful Original Drawings by the celebrated Architect Richardson’. This refers to the Scottish architect George Richardson (1737/8–c. 1813). However, the designs here are not only in many different hands but are also clearly the work of several different architectural practices over a period spanning perhaps five decades. This is not to exclude the possibility that George Richardson was responsible for some of the designs. Indeed, a number of drawings are very close to those produced by the Adam office (for whom Richardson worked from about 1756 up to the early 1760s) and to Richardson’s own designs as printed in his splendid A New collection of Chimney pieces (1781).

Only one drawing is signed (‘Shout delin.’). This is probably either Robert Shout (c. 1763–1843) or his brother Benjamin, both of whom moved from the north of England to London, where they kept a mason’s yard in Holborn; an album of designs by Robert Shout, including monuments and chimneypieces, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Most of the remaining drawings here are, however, too early to be by the Shouts.

Instead, the figure who may connect them all (and who may therefore have compiled the album) is the sculptor Thomas Carter the younger (d. 1795). ‘Thos. Carter’ is named as the intended sculptor of two of the chimneypiece designs, while a further design, dated 3 July 1760, is ‘to be ... executed by Mr. Carter’.

The sculptor Thomas Carter the elder, probably the uncle of Thomas Carter the younger, had died in 1756. It was the elder Carter who, around 1736,had ‘turned to the production of decorative sculpture and marble architectural features. From this point onwards, over an uncertain number of generations, Carter and his family specialized in the making of fine marble chimney-pieces ...’‘Carter was the first in a family of marble sculptors who were based in the parish of St George’s, Hanover Square,London. After his death the business was carried on by his brother, Benjamin, who bequeathed it to a nephew,Thomas Carter, who relocated the firm to St James’s, Piccadilly, in 1766.

The family business served an élite market: Carter numbered among his patrons the earl of Radnor, Earl Fitzwilliam, and the duke of Portland. Following his death in 1756 the firm continued to receive aristocratic patronage, and in the last forty years of the century it provided marble fittings for many of London’s premier architects, notably Robert Adam, James Stuart, Henry Holland, and Sir John Soane. The Carters were not innovative but supplied high quality products that fulfilled the needs of architects and embellished decorative schemes commissioned by their patrons.

From the 1730's to the 1790's the family shops adapted to the demands of fashion and remained at the apex of the market of their choice. A fine marble wine cooler at Blair Atholl, Perthshire, commissioned in 1751 by the second Duke of Atholl, is an example of the quality of work produced in Thomas Carter’s shop. Magnificent fireplaces at SaltramHouse, Devon, indicate that this quality of workmanship was maintained by his successors in the 1760's.

It is probable, though not certain, that the Thomas Carter who auctioned the entire stock of a yard at Hyde Park Corner on 19 December 1777 was Carter’s nephew. He is probably identical with Thomas Carter the younger who died in 1795. The Carters were one of the great sculpture families in England and take their place alongside the Stantons, Bacons, and Westmacotts’ (ODNB).Many of the designs in our album are worthy of Adam, Stuart, Holland or Soane (who worked for Holland from 1772–1778), and further research may well connect them more definitively with these celebrated architects and their draughtsmen. One particularly beautiful design is virtually identical with the chimneypiece in the Drawing Room at Berrington Hall, Herefordshire, built in 1778–81 by Henry Holland for Thomas Harley, son of the 3rd Earl of Oxford. Another design is inscribed with the name of the patron ‘Ld. Fitzmorris’, presumably William Petty, second earl of Shelburne (1737–1805), for whose house in Berkeley Square Robert Adam carried out decorative schemes (Carter is known to have executed chimneypieces after Adam’s designs for the house’s previous owner, the earl of Bute).

Among the names of other patrons noted on or below the drawings are the ‘Duke of York’ (?Prince EdwardAugustus, Duke of York and Albany (1739–1767)), ‘Mr Tattersall’ (perhaps Richard Tattersall (1724–1795), wealthybloodstock auctioneer, or his son Edmund (1758–1810)), ‘Sir James Peachey’ (1723–1808), ‘the dowager Lady Digby’, ‘Honle. Hand [i.e. Hans] Stanley’ (politician, 1721–1780), ‘the Earl of Tyrconnal’ (probably George Carpenter, 2nd Earl of Tyrconnell, 1750–1805) and ‘Sir Simeon Stewart’ (i.e. Stuart,c. 1721–1779).

Provenance: the businessman and politician Alexander Manning (1819–1903), of Toronto (and, in 1873, mayor ofthat city), with his armorial bookplate. ‘A. H. Manning was one of the businessmen who most benefited from the rise of Toronto. Early convinced of the city’s possibilities, he constructed and owned many of its buildings and invested most of his earnings in real estate. The political connections he made likely aided him in branching out into larger projects, but his pursuit and execution of these contracts sullied his reputation and sometimes marred his political career. As a politician, he was a representative of the new moneyed men in Toronto, and was often accused of being part of a ring of jobbers and self-promoters. At the same time, he was a consistent advocate of financial probity in civic government and of improvements to services’ (Dictionary of Canadian Biography