Gilt-Bronze Gothic Hall Lantern attributed to George Bullock
Gilt-bronze gothic hall lantern attributed to George Bullock, with stained and painted glass panels. The glass in the door panel is an old replacement, and one upper section is also replaced. English, c. 1815.
Height 41¼" (1,05m).
Width 17½" (44.5cm).
The lower part of this lantern, below the glass, and the corona above, are the same as on two other known lanterns by George Bullock (d. 1818), one supplied by Bullock for Napoléon’s house-in-exile on St. Helena,(1) the other from Burg Rheinstein in Germany, thought to have been acquired in London in 1826 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.(2) The design for these lanterns is amongst the Bullock designs preserved in the ‘Wilkinson Tracings’ (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery).(3) A third lantern, of related design, is in a private collection in London.
The present lantern is closer in overall form to other designs in the ‘Wilkinson Tracings’, for a hexagonal lantern,(4) and is related to another gilt-metal lantern, which hangs in the Library of Schloß Babelsberg, Berlin.(5) This lantern, also smaller and hexagonal, though with plain glass, might also have been acquired by Schinkel in London, and subsequently used at Babelsberg, which was designed by him in 1833 for Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Princess Augusta.
The manufacture of the lantern can possibly be attributed to the firm of W. & S. Summers, listed in 1818 at 105 New Bond Street (very close to Bullock’s premises in Tenterden Street) as ‘furnishing ironmongers’.(6) The connection between Bullock and Summers is documented by a letter in the Tew Archive, and Summers was a buyer in the Bullock ‘Stock-in-Trade’ sale of 1819, after George Bullock’s death.(7)
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Footnotes.
1. See Martin Levy, ‘Napoleon in Exile’, in Furniture History, Vol. XXXIV, 1998, pp. 1-211, no. 34, p. 105, and fig. 59, p. 75.
2. See Metropole London 1800-1840, ed. Celina Fox, exhibition catalogue, 1992, no. 319, the lantern lent to the exhibition by Harris Lindsay.
3. ‘Tracings by Thomas Wilkinson, from the Designs of the late Mr George Bullock 1820’, p. 162. (The Birmingham Museum reference for the Wilkinson Tracings is M.3.74.)
4. Ibid., pp. 163 and 168. We are grateful to the late Clive Wainwright for these references.
5. Not published, but seen by Bruce Lindsay at Babelsberg about 15 years ago. Photograph in Harris Lindsay files.
6. Johnstone’s London Commercial Guide and Street Directory, 1818.
7. See Martin Levy, ‘George Bullock’s Partnership with Charles Fraser, 1813-1818, and the Stock-in-Trade Sale, 1819’, Furniture History, Vol. XXV, 1989, pp. 153-4.
