Living with antiques: a New York City apartment

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1998 by Ralph Harvard

Stepping off the elevator one finds an English gilded looking glass of about 1730 and a seventeenth-century traveling table, both glimpsed through the doorway in Plate I, as well as a view of the studio of William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) in the Tenth Street Studio Building, and a painting by the expatriate American artist Walter Gay (1856-1937) of the Paris drawing room of the artist Paul Helleu (1859-1927) in a frame designed by Stanford White (1853-1906). This mixture of times and countries sets the stage for the rooms to follow.

The foyer (Pl. I) houses a Chinese export caned settee made for the American market about 1800. Above it hang Walter Gay's haunting late nineteenth-century Interior at Reveillon and other French views by American expatriates. Not shown, but also displayed in the foyer, are two American works: Deception, a trompe-l'oeil painting by John Haberle (1856-1933) and a box sculpture by Joseph Cornell (1903-1972). Also in the foyer is a choice Salem, Massachusetts, secretary of about 1800 with a distinctive Gothic cornice and the old finish that is found on much of the furniture in the collection (see Pl. II). It contains a pair of Chinese export urns of about 1800 with hidden images of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, as well as toy trains made for the American market by Gebruder Marklin in Goppingen, Germany, around the turn of the century. Flanking the secretary is a pair of rare gilded wood and verd antique American Federal sconces possibly made in New York City.

In the living room the architecture sets the style (Pls. III-VI). The elaborate chimneypiece of about 1740 includes carved eagles' heads and claws and naturalistically carved late baroque shells. The carving is related to the shell and acanthus carving on a rectangular tea table made for Graeme Park in Horsham, Pennsylvania (now in the Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware), architectural carving in the Pennsylvania State House, and other work attributed to the Philadelphia shops of Samuel Harding and Brian Wilkinson, which functioned during the 1750s. On the mantel is a pair of unusual French bronze and gilt-bronze candlesticks of about 1770 fitted with period globes. Between them is a biscuit porcelain group of about 1785 depicting Louis XVI and Benjamin Franklin. The group is attributed to Charles Gabriek Sauvage, called Lemire (1741-1827). Identical examples are in the Musee Carnavalet in Paris, the Winterthur Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The early nineteenth-century trompe-l'oeil fireboard, from the collection of the late Nina Fletcher and Bertram K. Little, has some painted louvers and some real ones. The arched cabinets flanking the fireplace (see Pl. IV) are copied from designs by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820). They hold a variety of silver objects and Chinese export ceramic wares, including a group of plates dating from the 1730s that show the harbor at Cape Town, South Africa, with Table Mountain in the distance.

Much of the furniture in the living room is American. The mahogany side chair at the extreme right in Plate III was made in Philadelphia about 1765. The carving is attributed to Nicholas Bernard and Martin Jugiez (w. together c.1762-c.1783); the X-back splat was copied from Plate XIV in the third edition (1762) of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker's Director. The robust card table of about 1765 shown in Plate III was probably made in New York City. On it is a pair of Sheffield candlesticks of about 1775 modeled on tin-glazed earthenware candlesticks made in Rouen, France. The Philadelphia tripod tea table with hairy paw feet in front of the window in the same view was made about 1770 and has ribbon and flower carving around its round top. On it is a grand silver salver made in Philadelphia about 1775 by Richard Humphreys (1750-1832). It bears the cipher of George Emlen IV (1741-1812), a Philadelphia merchant. The sofa of about 1780 and the easy chair of about 1770 were also made in Philadelphia and both have been carefully upholstered in the eighteenth-century manner, emphasizing the bold shaping and splay of the arms. The size and application of the fringe are based on the accounts of General John Cadwalader (1742-1786) of Philadelphia with the London firm Rushton and Beachcroft and the Philadelphia upholsterers John Webster (w. c. 1760-1780) and Plunket Fleeson (w.c. 1770-1780). The pair of side chairs shown in Plate V was probably made by Thomas Tufft (c. 1740-1788) of Philadelphia about 1775 and retain their original finish. They flank a small Boston block-front chest of drawers made about 1770 of highly figured mahogany. It retains the original brasses. Flanking a walnut desk-and-bookcase made in Boston in the 1730s is a pair of Chinese export side chairs with trifid feet made in the Philadelphia style and upholstered in a mid-eighteenth-century resist-dyed linen (Pl. VI).

The pictures in the living room once again merge continents and centuries. Engraved views of New York City by Pierre Charles Canot (1710-1777) are balanced by French interiors by Walter Gay. A watercolor of a Kangxi porcelain vase and bowl by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) (at the left in Pl. VI) is at home among the eighteenth-century Chinese export furniture in the room. This includes a tea table, partially visible to the left of the window in Plate III, and a number of stools made of huanghuali wood that are now used as side tables. The large drawing of Parson Weems' Fable by Grant Wood (1891-1942) above the mantel is a study for the oil painting of 1939 now in the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The drawing is in its original frame, which Wood decorated with trompe-l'oeil stars.