ATTRIBUTED TO MARSH AND TATHAM, CIRCA 1810

These important mahogany and ebonised torchères are inspired by a design by the fashionable furniture-designer and exponent of the Regency style, Thomas Hope (1769-1831), which he included in his influential work on interior design, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, published in 1807. They are attributed to one of the pre-eminent Regency cabinet-making firms in London, Marsh & Tatham of 13 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, who were supplying furniture to George, Prince of Wales (later George IV, 1762-1830) at Carlton House, London and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Originally, part of a set of six, the torchères were probably commissioned by either General John de Burgh, 13th Earl of Clanricarde (1744-1808) or by his wife, Elizabeth, née Burke (d. 1854), who he married in March 1799.

THE CLANRICARDE BEQUEST

These torchères form part of the magnificent Clanricarde bequest to Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood (1882-1947) on the death of his great uncle Hubert de Burgh, 2nd Marquess of Clanricarde, who died without issue in 1916. Lady Elizabeth Joanna de Burgh (1826-1854), daughter of Ulick de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, sister to Hubert and grandmother to the 6th Earl of Harewood, was the first wife of Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood (1824-1892).
The 13th Earl of Clanricarde, who succeeded his brother in 1797, together with his son, the 1st Marquess of Clanricarde were affluent and acquisitive Irish aristocrats, and are known to have commissioned Regency furniture in an advanced avant garde taste, including the suite of bergères sold from Harewood in the 1951 sale, lot 45. Similarly, to the present torchères, this seat-furniture descended from the 2nd Marquess of Clanicarde to the 6th Earl of Harewood, and was likewise eventually at Chesterfield House, illustrated in H. Avray Tipping, 'Chesterfield House, Mayfair', Country Life, Feb. 25th 1922, p. 240 and in C. Musgrave, Regency Furniture 1800-1830, London, 1961, fig. 41b.

MARSH & TATHAM

Marsh & Tatham (subsequently Tatham, Bailey & Sanders) was a partnership between William Marsh (active 1775-1810) and Thomas Tatham (1763-1818); the latter, in his early years, worked for his cousin, John Linnell (1729-96), the celebrated cabinet-maker. From the 1780s, Marsh & Tatham were associated with fashionable architects such as Henry Holland (1745-1806), celebrated for the remodeling of Carlton House, London, and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton for the Prince of Wales/George IV, and commissions for Samuel Whitbread II at Southill, Bedfordshire, and John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire (1). From 1788, Holland employed Charles Heathcote Tatham (1772-1842), the younger brother of Thomas Tatham, and in the mid-1790s, he was sent to Rome and Naples to sketch ancient architecture and ornament, in addition to assembling a collection of architectural fragments. C.H. Tatham returned to England in 1797, and published his drawings two years later in Etchings, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture drawn from the originals in Rome, and other parts of Italy, during the years 1794, 1795 and 1796. The book was extremely popular and became a vital source of material for many of his contemporaries like Hope working in the new spare archeological neoclassical style; it went into a third edition in 1810. Undoubtedly, Marsh & Tatham benefitted from the family connection, supplying furniture for Carlton House and the Royal Pavilion, much of which has remained in the Royal Collection. It seems likely that furniture based on C.H. Tatham’s designs was made by Marsh & Tatham. This included a set of four yew wood-veneered bookcases for Carlton House, supplied in June 1806: two bookcases survive in the Royal Collection (2), one in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and a fourth in private hands (offered at Christie’s, London, 9 July 1992, lot 132). These bookcases are mounted with patinated bronze Grecian heads of the youthful Dionysus that correspond to the satyr heads on these torchères, which represent Zeus, Greek god of sky and thunder (Jupiter in Roman mythology), and provide a striking contrast to the rich mahogany.

THE DESIGN

The torchères were conceived as Roman 'bronze' torchères in the antique manner promoted by Tatham's Etchings and subsequently adopted in Hope's Household Furniture, pl. XXVI. The satyr-masks joined by berried-laurel swags are inspired by C.H. Tatham’s drawings of fragments in marble ‘collected in Rome’ in the Etchings, which Hope reinterpreted in his illustrations for ‘Altars & Sarcophagus’ and ‘Scenic masks’ in his Costume of the Ancients (1809) (3).

Marsh & Tatham, using the label Tatham & Co., supplied a set of four closely related giltwood stands for Carlton House on 1 February 1810; Benjamin Jutsham, the Prince of Wales’s inventory clerk, noted: ‘Four Elegant Antique Gilt Tripods to carrie [sic] Lights’ were received at Carlton House for the ‘Room next to the Conservatory’, and the following day: ‘One yard of scarlet cloth to cover the 4 Blocks with to receive Candelabras’ was delivered (4). These Royal stands can be seen in the watercolour of the Dining Room, Basement Floor, Carlton House by W.H. Pyne, published in 1819 (5). Interestingly, the Royal stands were moved to the Duchess of Kent’s Drawing Room at Frogmore House, the location of the four torchères, part of the set to which the present torchères belong, before they were sold at Christie’s, London, on 28 June 1951, lot 49. Like the Royal torchères, the Clanricarde/Harewood torchères illustrate the close ties that existed between George, Prince of Wales, C.H. Tatham, Thomas Hope, Henry Holland and Marsh & Tatham.

Interestingly, as will be illustrated by further lots in this sale with a Harewood provenance, both Edward Lascelles, 1st Earl Harewood (1740-1820), and his son and heir, Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles (1767-1814), were acquiring furniture from Marsh & Tatham as shown by entries in their respective account books (6).

(1) The firm of Marsh & Tatham underwent a significant number of name changes as partners joined or retired. Although Marsh & Tatham is listed in trade directories from 1803-11, the period when these tripods were executed, they appear as Tatham & Bailey in rate books from 1807-10, and in this guise the firm took out insurance in 1808 suggesting that William Marsh had retired by this date.
(2) RCIN 21705, 39475.
(3) Vol. II, plates 187, 199, 274.
(4) RCIN 6664.
(5) W.H. Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St. James's Palace, Carlton House, and Frogmore, London, 1819, opposite p. 80.
(6) Abigail L.H. Moore, Imagining Egypt: The Regency Furniture Collections at Harewood House, Leeds and Nineteenth Century Images of Egypt (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Southampton, 2001), p. 147; WYL250/3/Acs/190; WYL250/3/Acs/192.