Painted side chair

DateCa. 1820

Attributed to Hugh Finlay

MediumTulip poplar, maple, and cane.

DimensionsOH: 32 3/4" OW: 17 3/8" OD: 15 3/4"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1994-108,2

DescriptionAppearance: Late classical side chair; concave tablet-form crest rail with applied half-round molding on reverse at top; concave rectilinear stay rail; turned stiles; T-shaped outer side seat rails; front seat rail with rounded profile; caned seat; turned legs; turned box stretchers. Painted decoration consisting of gilt stencils with extensive freehand ornamentation in red and black; blue ground; yellow caned seat.

Construction: A half-round molding is affixed to the back of the crest rail with three cut nails. The stay rail is tenoned into the stiles, which are in turn round-tenoned into the crest rail and the T-shaped, outer side seat rails. The inner side seat rails are tenoned into the front and rear seat rails, and the outer side seat rails are glued to the resulting frame. The front seat rail is a two-piece lamination. Legs and stretchers are joined with round tenons.

Materials: Tulip poplar crest rail, stay rail, and seat rails; maple stiles, legs, and stretchers.
Label TextUntil about 1810, most of the painted furniture made in Baltimore was based on the straightforward neoclassical models illustrated in late eighteenth-century English design manuals like those of George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton. The painted ornament usually featured classical trophies or local architectural landmarks and sometimes incorporated églomisé panels. This approach was largely supplanted after 1810 by the radically different interpretations of classical style then sweeping western Europe. Far more archaeologically correct in form and decoration, the new mode was closely based on classical Greek and Roman designs and lent itself particularly well to expression in colorful paints and gold leaf.

Brothers John (1777-1851) and Hugh (1781-1831) Finlay, working together and individually, were the vanguard of the Baltimore trade in painted furniture. In 1810 Hugh Finlay took the unusual step of traveling to Europe in search of current designs. In December, John advertised that the firm had "RECEIVED FROM LONDON, A HANDSOME COLLECTION OF ENGRAVINGS, Many of them in colours . . . selected by Hugh Finlay--who has forwarded by the latest arrivals, a number of Drawings, from furniture in the first houses in Paris and London, which enable them [the Finlays] to make the most approved articles in their line." This step, unprecedented among American furniture makers of the day, almost certainly accounts for the avant-garde, decidedly European nature of the Finlays' painted furniture in succeeding years.

The present Baltimore chair is attributed to Hugh Finlay since the T-shape and painted ornament of the side seat rails are identical to those on CWF chairs 2003-1, 4-7. The latter are from a suite that also includes a couch (CWF acc. 2003-1, 1) that is, in turn, by the same hand that produced a couch for Humberston Skipwith of Prestwould Plantation in Mecklenburg Co., Va. A surviving bill of sale documents that the Skipwith couch was supplied by Hugh Finlay in 1819.

While Baltimore artisans produced all manner of fancy furniture forms--sofas, tables, lamp stands, bedsteads, girandoles, and window cornices--the side chair was the mainstay of the industry. After 1815, most painted Baltimore chairs followed the basic Greco-Roman klismos design, exhibiting a tablet-form crest rail, turned stiles, and turned front legs instead of the saber legs used in other cities. A wide variety of decorative approaches was available to suit the buyer's taste and price range. The most elaborate Baltimore chairs featured ornament akin to that on the CWF example, with gilded and stenciled classical figures and foliage enhanced by freehand application of paints, washes, and tinted varnishes meant to simulate the costly gilt bronze mounts then in use on European furniture.

The CWF chair is unusual, principally in the choice of blue for the ground color. Baltimore chairmakers advertised that they painted furniture in "all colors," although grounds of red and yellow, and, slightly later, black or rosewood graining are far more common. The varnished blue on this chair may represent a specific order by the original owner.

Painted Baltimore chairs were normally produced in matching sets of six or twelve. Unlike most of their American predecessors, however, the makers of painted furniture in the classical taste often produced entire suites of furniture with matching tables, seating pieces, window cornices, and the like.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe chairs were probably first owned by William Given Hutchins (1800-1872) and Sarah Anderson Hutchins (1799-1830) of My Lady's Manor, Baltimore Co., Md., and may have been acquired at the time of their marriage in 1825. The chairs likely descended to their son, James Alfred Hutchins (1826-1888); to his son William Herbert Hutchins (1860-1905); and then to his daughters, Garnett Beatrice Hutchins (1891-1978) and Helen Alverda Hutchins (1894-1978), all of My Lady's Manor. Oral tradition indicates that originally there were twelve chairs in the set and that six were sold during the 1940s. The remaining six were auctioned ca. 1979 for the estate of Garnett Hutchins. They were purchased in 1994 by Colwill-McGehee, Antique Decorative and Fine Arts, Baltimore, who resold the two best- preserved chairs to CWF.

Exhibition(s)