IN THE MANNER OF WILLIAM AND RICHARD GOMM, CIRCA 1760

THE POWDERHAM CASTLE PROVENANCE
Powderham Castle sits on the west bank of the river Exe, in the former Manor of Powderham. The original building was a fortified manor house, with an inner mediaeval core dating to the late 14th or early 15th century. This first structure was built by Sir Philip Courtenay (1355-1406), the son of Sir Hugh de Courtenay (1303-1377) and Margaret de Bohun (1311-1391), from whose marriage all the subsequent Courtenay Earls of Devon descended. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the castle was expanded greatly, with the Belvedere Tower added in 1771 and further additions and alterations made to suit neo-Gothic Victorian taste, under the guidance of the Devon-born architect Charles Fowler. The castle has witnessed some key events in British history, coming under siege for seven weeks during the Wars of the Roses in 1455, and being garrisoned in 1645 by Royalist soldiers during the Civil War. A Royalist outpost, Powderham came under persistent attack from Parliamentarians before finally being captured in January 1646; in the exchanges the castle suffered extensive damage. The castle still remains the seat of the Courtenay Earls of Devon, and the present chairs are recorded in the 1803 inventory and in two twentieth-century articles in Country Life.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN
This magnificent pair of chairs reflect the fully conceived 'French' rococo taste of the mid-eighteenth century, at the height of its popularity in Georgian England. Their sinuous frames, entwined with Roman acanthus foliage, reflect the 'picturesque' style that had been invented on the Continent by artists, architects and ornementistes such as Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and Gilles-Marie Oppenord, translated into an English expression and embodying the sculptural element promoted for 'moveables' (furnishings) in 1753 by Hogarth in the The Analysis of Beauty.

Although the precise design is attributed to the Clerkenwell cabinet-makers, father and son William and Richard Gomm, it relates to a larger group of such designs, both executed and preserved in print and manuscript patterns, by a great number of furniture makers who collectively shaped the English rococo style. Designed in the manner of the French fauteuil à la Reine, the Powderham Castle chairs epitomize Thomas Chippendale's 'Modern' or French 'picturesque' style illustrated in The Director, 1754-1762. In the early 1750s, Chippendale advertised the establishment of his cabinet-making workshops with a trade-sheet headed by one such chair, and he adopted a 'French Elbow Chair', as his trade-sign, illustrating 'picturesque' ornaments for them in his Director, 1754 (pl. XVIIII and XX). He also noted that the backs are designed 'to be open below at the seat, which greatly lightens them; the ornaments on the backs and seats are in imitation of tapestry or needlework. The carving may be lessened [i.e. fretted through] by an ingenious workman without detriment to the chair' (text for plate XVIII).

Also related is the design for a chair by Chippendale's collaborator, Matthias Lock, which is now known as the 'Sitter's Chair' because it appears in many of Richard Cosway's portraits of the 1760s and 1770s (see H. Hayward, 'A Unique Rococo Chair by Matthias Lock', Apollo, October 1973, pp. 268-271; J. Hardy, 'The Discovery of Cosway's Chair', Country Life, 15 March 1973 and J. Fowler and J. Cornforth, English Decoration in the 18th Century, London, 1978, pp. 154-155). The design and the chair are both in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where it part of an album of undated drawings entitled 'Original Designs by Matts.Lock, Carver 1740-1765', purchased by the museum in 1862 from Lock's grandson.

The most famous related extant chairs by William and Richard Gomm is a suite of at least seven armchairs, circa 1760-1765, supplied either to Francis Palmer, Elizabeth Palmer or Sir Roger Palmer of Castle Lacken, Co. Mayo and later Kenure Park, Co. Dublin, Ireland, today known as the Kenure Park Suite (see J. Hardy, `The Discovery of the Cosway's Chair, Country Life, 15 March 1973, figs. 4 and 5). A design very closely related to Kenure Park chairs is preserved in the Joseph Downs Collection in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Delaware (reproduced in in L. Boynton, 'William & Richard Gomm', The Burlington Magazine, June 1980, fig. 25). The manuscript book, the first of three, comprises designs for furniture, rooms and ornamental details, some of which bear the signature of William Gomm and are variously dated July, August and 18th November 1761. Lindsay Boynton aptly notes that the designs vary in their degree of individuality and some are actually copied from publications by Lock and Copland or Chippendale's Director. It is known that William Gomm subscribed to Mortimer's Universal Director, 1754, and his son, Richard Gomm subscribed to Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754.