CIRCA 1765

The M.P. and civil servant William FitzHerbert III (1712-1772), scion of an ancient Derbyshire family, and his wife Mary (c. 1721-1753), of whom Dr. Johnson pronounced he knew no woman "of sounder understanding", were patrons of the arts and parents of two prominent collectors of art and literature: William, 1st Bt. FitzHerbert (1748-1791) and Alleyne, 1st Baron Saint Helens (1753-1839). Their Derbyshire estate, Tissington Hall, was built in 1609 on the site of what had been the family seat since 1465, and the the old Jacobean house was improved in the middle the eighteenth century, overseen by the elder William. It was he who most probably commissioned the Titchfield Street chair-maker, John Hobcraft, to produce a number of pieces of furniture for the house, including a set of antiquarian Gothic mahogany dining-chairs (sold Christie's, London, 22 January 2009, lot 600) to sit alongside the magnificent Hopton stone chimney-piece made in 1757 by Joseph Hall of Derby. William also commissioned from Angelica Kauffman a portrait of the young Alleyne as a boy, as well as two portraits of his daughter Selina FitzHerbert (1752-1823), later Mrs. Henry Gally Knight, one of which was listed in the 1775 inventory of Tissington as in the withdrawing room: 'Miss FitzHerbert in Ditto [a guilt (sic.) frame]', and later sold Christie's, London, 22 January 2009, lot 597.

The drawing room was also the site of the present table, when in 1911 Tissington Hall was photographed for Country Life. Curiously, the Country Life images in which the piece appears depict it in two different places within the drawing room, suggesting that the photographer repositioned it between shots.