Unusually Large Pair of Gilt-Wood Looking-Glasses in the manner of John Linnell
English, 18th Century
The elaborate balanced design of many subsidiary plates is round a series of three super-imposed central plates. The crossed fronds of the two central circular upper plates are reversed in each looking glass, and the great vigour and depth of the sculpture can be seen in the photograph (to right) by the reflection of the fronds in the plates. The crestings, similarly, are designed in reverse, one to the other.
Height 9'10" (3,00m).
Width 5'3" (1,60m).
Provenance :- The Earls of Mexborough, Methley Hall, Yorkshire. One of these looking-glasses was purchased from Thomas Bell of Newcastle in 1953 by the architect, William Whitfield, for Charles Peat (1892-1979), Wycliffe Hall, Co. Durham. The provenance Professor Whitfield was given was Methley Hall. One was advertised in Connoisseur, June 1918, by Thomas Edwards & Son of Harrogate, also with the Methley provenance, as it had been bought from Lady Mary Savile, the sister of Lord Mexborough. The pair of looking-glasses had become separated, when it is not known, but presumably before 1918, and we have had the remarkable chance to re-unite them. This provenance is further confirmed by an inventory of 1778 of the contents of Methley Hall, 'An Inventory of the Plate, Household Goods, Pictures and other Furniture which, at the time of the decease of the late Lord Mexborough, were at his house at Methley in the County of York'. Listed in the Drawing Room are 'Two large Glasses with gilt frames', the bareness of this description being in accord with the descriptions of the other contents of the house. The inventory was carried out by Robert Parker, the family's lawyer, and Thomas Smith, estate manager, in April 1778 (see West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds, ref. WYL56/437).
Methley Hall, which no longer exists, stood on a site which had been occupied since 1087. The house which contained these looking glasses, and which survived until the early-1960s, had been built for Sir John Savile in the 1590s, and had been extensively restored in the 1830s by Anthony Salvin for the 3rd Earl of Mexborough.
These looking glasses are very much in the style of John Linnell (1729-1796). John Linnell and his father, William, are amongst the most renowned of English furniture designers and cabinet-makers, and their furniture and designs can be seen in many houses and museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (see Helena Hayward and Pat Kirkham, William and John Linnell, 1980).
The carving of these looking glasses is also very similar to that of a bed in Temple Newsam House Museum, Yorkshire, the repository of some of the finest existing English furniture. Echoes of the carved gilt-wood cornice of the bed are seen in the character of the leafage, the swags of fruit and flowers above the cresting and the central shell at the bottom of these looking glasses (see Christopher Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, 1978, Vol. I, p. 24). The cornice may be from Linnell's workshop, and there are other similarities between the design of the shelly cornucopiae with that heading a pier glass at Hopetown House, Midlothian, which, together with the drawing for it, is reproduced in Hayward & Kirkham, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 108-109. The same publication illustrates a marquetry commode whose front shows an outlined centre panel very reminiscent of the top two central plates of these looking glasses, the branches joining and spreading forward in a cresting en trompe l'oeil, the corresponding, similarly outlined panel on the top of the commode with the stems similarly ribbon-bound (op. cit., Vol. I, col. plates 10-11, opp. p. 59).
