Decorated panel
Category
Architecture / Features & Decoration
Date
circa 1780
Materials
Plasterwork, paint and gilding
Collection
Attingham Park, Shropshire
NT 610175
Summary
The decorative paint and plasterwork scheme applied to the walls and ceiling of the Boudoir. The painting of the panels, doors and ceiling of this room is among the most delicate schemes of late eighteenth-century decoration to survive in this country. Reminiscent of the delicate arabesques painted by the Rousseau brothers in the Queen's cabinet de toilette at Fontainebleau in 1785, it has been attributed to a contemporary French decorative painter, Louis-André Delabrière, on the grounds of similarity to his work for Henry Holland at Carlton House and Southall in the 1790s. The use of subtle variations of tone and colour in and around the panels is certainly characteristically Louis Seize, and the ornament half-way between the richness of Clérisseau's boiseries for the Hôtel Grimod de la Reyniére (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the later attenuation of Bélanger's designs. The chimneypiece, also in the French style, is probably one of those supplied by John Deval the younger in 1785. In the sale catalogue of 1827 this room is described as having blue figured silk curtains with corresponding drapery round the mirror opposite to give the illusion of a second window. There was also a fitted carpet, somewhat unexpectedly described as blue-ground brown, black, and white Persia-pattern.
Provenance
Attingham collection; bequeathed to the National Trust with the estate, house and contents of Attingham by Thomas Henry Noel-Hill, 8th Baron Berwick (1877-1947) on 15th May 1953.