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A GEORGE II GILTWOOD SIDE TABLE CIRCA 1745-1755 The original serpentine brèche violette marble top now backed with a slate slab above a pounced and Vitruvian scroll frieze, centred by a foliate scroll cartouche and the Lascelles crest, a bear's head muzzled, flanked by swags of abundantly fruiting vines, wave ornament and acanthus scrolls, on scrolled legs terminating in mythical dolphin's heads, streams of water pouring from their open mouths, traces of original white-painted and parcel-gilt decoration 35 in. (89 cm.) high; 71 ? in. (182 cm.) wide; 36 in. (91.5 cm.) deep
This imposing giltwood table is heraldically charged with the Lascelles crest, later the Earls of Harewood. It echoes the coat-of-arms incised on the magnificent Palladian pediment of the north face of Harewood House, Yorkshire, the Lascelles' country seat, designed by the Palladian architect John Carr (1723-1807) from 1759, and later by the Neo-classical exponent Robert Adam (1728-92). The table illustrates the important influence of the Palladian-style promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) and his protégé, the Rome-trained architect-designer, William Kent (1685-1748).
HENRY LASCELLES AND HIS SON, EDWIN
This table was possibly commissioned by Henry Lascelles (d. 1753) for Litchfield House, Richmond, Surrey or for Gawthorpe Hall in Yorkshire. At his death in October 1753, Henry was probably the richest man in England, worth around £500,000, which, in the 1750s, was sufficient to purchase ‘twenty-five good English estates of 4000 acres each’ (1). Henry was descended from Yorkshire gentry and accumulated his great wealth through trade, specifically a sugar plantation in Barbados. In 1739 following the death of his brother George, Henry left Barbados for good to run the London office, and presumably legitimise the family name and reputation in the City of London. By the mid-1740s he had achieved this ambition; he was Member of Parliament for the family seat of Northallerton, one of the great financiers of the City, and had the ear of crown ministers and government officials. It was perhaps in this period that he acquired the giltwood table offered here. In 1750, he retired from business to Litchfield House with his second wife Jennett Whetstone, a widow whom he had married in 1731.
Alternatively, it may have been commissioned by Edwin Lascelles (1713 - 95, from July 1790 1st Baron Harewood), for Gawthorpe Hall, Yorkshire. Edwin was Henry Lascelles' eldest son from his first marriage to Mary Carter, and following Henry's death in 1753 Edwin inherited the vast Harewood and Gawthorpe estates while his younger brother Daniel continued the family’s mercantile activities in London and the West Indies. Edwin, Member of Parliament for the constituency of Scarborough between 1744-1754 and heir to approximately £166,666 of his father’s fortune set about establishing himself as a major landowner with broader commercial interests by building a new country seat, Harewood House. The building of Harewood commenced in 1759 and was not completed until 1771. Meanwhile Edwin lived at the old mansion of Gawthorpe where Carr was employed from 1753. In what was presumably a relatively early purchase by Edwin the design of this table reflects the influence of Roman Baroque console tables. Edwin, as was customary for the sons of the nobility, had undertaken his grand tour in 1738, visiting Rome, Padua and Turin where he undoubtedly saw in aristocratic palaces the parade of rooms furnished with two or four such console tables, and mirrors and stools en suite, intended to achieve the perfect symmetry of a theatrical interior (2).
THE DESIGN
Originally gold and white painted, this side table is conceived in the George II ‘Roman’ fashion inspired by Italian designers such as Filippo Passarini (Nuove inventioni d’ornamenti d’architettura e d’intagli diversi u