'Completing the Picture' exhibition offers collectors an opportunity to view signature pieces in a domestic setting, pairing the finest examples from the Norman Adams' Antique Furniture Collection, with a collection of Old Master Paintings selected by Rafael Valls.
The exhibition will run from Wednesday 7th November until Friday 23rd November, 2007 at Norman Adams Limited, 8 - 10 Hans Road, London SW3 1RX (opposite the west side of Harrods). Open Monday - Friday 10am - 5.30pm.
This is the first time that Norman Adams Limited and Rafael Valls Limited have combined examples from their joint collections for an exhibition in Norman Adams' Knightsbridge Galleries.
'Completing the Picture' illustrates the perfect partnership that English antique furniture and Old Master paintings achieve with hand-picked pieces by leading eighteenth and nineteenth century cabinet-makers, including Henry Hill of Marlborough and Gillows, as well as Old Master paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, including Sir Thomas Lawrence, Jan van Bylert and Jan Josefsz van Goyen. The exhibition offers both new and established collectors an opportunity to view signature pieces in a domestic setting.
Each pairing of an Old Master painting and a piece of fine furniture has been carefully chosen to complement the other. A Still Life of Peaches, Grapes and a Melon on a Silver Plate on a Wooden Table from 1649 by Dutch Master Laurens Craen, will hang above a c.1750 Irish mahogany side table, with an apron carved with flowers, acanthus and a classical mask. Sir Thomas Lawrence's fine Portrait of Mrs George Frederick Stratton has been partnered with a George III ormolu mounted mahogany serpentine commode in the French taste from 1765 and attributed to Henry Hill of Marlborough. The full length portrait of Mrs Stratton by Lawrence can be seen in the Ringling Museum, Sarasota.
Further highlights from the Norman Adams Collection in this exhibition include the Harvey Suite, a suite of George III drawing room furniture, comprising a set of four carved mahogany armchairs and a pair of window seats from c.1780. These pieces were commissioned by the Harvey Family for their family seat Ickwell Bury, Bedfordshire. All the pieces are stamped RE, thought to be Richard & Robert Edmundson, a company known to have worked with Gillows and the design corresponds with one in the Gillows' Estimate Sketch Books from 1788.
Early examples include a Charles II limewood mirror in the manner of Grinling Gibbons from c.1680, similar to one in the V&A Museum collection and a set of four George I walnut and marquetry side chairs from c.1715 with floral gros point needlework seat coverings that may be original.
Further eighteenth century pieces include a Sheraton period Scottish mahogany bonheur-du-jour c.1790 with thistle marquetry in the quartered and cross-banded panels typical of period Scottish cabinet-making, once owned by a Dr Alexander Bell, who left 50 letters in a secret drawer. He was probably the first owner of the piece. There will also be a George III bow-fronted painted commode in the neoclassical taste, popularised by Robert Adam, from c.1780 and an exquisite George III harewood and marquetry tambour writing table of c.1775, which is similar in design to examples in the collections of both the Duke of Northumberland and at Temple Newsam House, Leeds.
From the nineteenth century there is a splendid mid-nineteenth English bureau plat in Louis XV taste with its original green leather top and ormolu mounts from the collection of the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, as well as a finely carved mahogany centre pedestal desk of c.1860, which harks back to a design for a Library Table in plate LXXXIV of the 1762 edition of Chippendale's 'The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director' of a century earlier.
Further examples from Rafael Valls' Collection include superb Dutch Still Life pictures from the seventeenth century, including a painting by Laurens Craen, one of the better followers of Jan Davidsz de Heem from 1649. A selection of landscape studies include An Estuary Landscape with Figures in Rowing Boats off a Jetty by Jan Josefsz van Goyen, an exponent of the New Haarlem landscape school of the seventeenth century, originally from the Easton Neston Collection. The artist, Jan van Bylert was one of a group of Utrecht Caravaggesque painters, who were heavily influenced by Caravaggio. His painting, 'The Jolly Toper' is a study of a young man drinking a glass of wine. This example is from the collection of the Baroness Eugene de Rothschild.
Stewart Whittington of Norman Adams Ltd commented: "We are delighted to provide a setting to illustrate how well-chosen English furniture and Old Master paintings can complete the picture in a collector's home."
Rafael Valls of Rafael Valls Limited said: "Old Master paintings and fine furniture have always been the perfect foil for each other and we are delighted to be able to develop our working relationship from the BADA Fair to this more expansive setting."
www.normanadams.com www.rafaelvalls.co.uk
