The Ditchley Park Mirror by John Linnell
Height: 66.75" 179.5cm
Width: 57.5" 146cm
Conceived as a Chinese landscape, the mirror plates are intended to represent water and be framed by twisting trees that hang over the water's edge, with cascading water and a bridge with a pagoda sitting above.
English, Circa 1755
Possibly commissioned by Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth and 1st Marquess of Bath (d. 1796) for his London house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.
Thence by descent, where it first appears in an 1896 inventory at 48 Berkeley Square following the death of the 4th Marquess of Bath.
The mirror was subsequently moved to 29 Grosvenor Square, a house purchased by the 5th Marquess in 1903.
Removed from 29 Grosvenor Square; sold Sotheby's, London, 22 November 1940, lot 81.
Ronald and Marietta Tree, The Tapestry Drawing Room (Mrs. Tree's Sitting Room), Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire.
This mirror became a prized possession of the celebrated Virginian hostess Nancy Tree, later Lancaster, who became famed for her 'impeccable taste' as a London decorator through ownership of Sybil Colefax Ltd. and her partnership with John Fowler. It was following the Trees' 1933 acquisition of the Georgian mansion of Ditchley Park, Oxford that the mirror was purchased for Mrs Tree's Sitting Room, where it appeared in a watercolour made by Alexandre Serbriakoff. The following year it travelled to New York with Ronald Tree (d.1976) and his second wife Marietta (d. 1991) and featured in the latter's New York apartment illustrated in Arthur Schlesinger, Junior's profile of her as 'Chair' of the Citizens Committee for New York City published in the Architectural Digest of March 1984.
The mid-eighteenth century cult of beauty, as promoted by the artist William Hogarth's, Analysis of Beauty (1753), brought about a revolution in English furniture design and this was demonstrated in the cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale's, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754). While Hogarth's serpentined 'line of Beauty' replaced the earlier 'unnatural' straight lines favoured by Rome-driven architects, it was later mocked by the actor David Garrick, when describing fashionable 'picturesque' landscapes in The Clandestine Marriage (1768):- 'Ay, there's none of your straight lines here - but all taste - zig-zag - crinkum-crankum -in and out-right and left - so and again - twisting and turning like a worm'. Garrick's twisting line is well represented by this over-mantel mirror.
LITERATURE
Alexander Serebriakoff, 'Ditchley Chinese Room', a watercolor dated 1750 (the mirror shown in situ in the Drawing Room Mrs. Tree's Sitting Room at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire).
'The English Overmantel Looking Glass', The Magazine Antiques, October 2005, p. 153, pl. IV.
William & John Linnell by Hayward & Kirkham.
ON THE MIRROR
M9904 A Chinese late Ming Blanc de Chine Guanyin seated on a pierced rockwork base, with right hand resting on her raised knee exposing her foot, wearing long flowing robes and a jewelled necklace, looking down at a standing boy with his arms concealed beneath long robes, covered in a cream glaze.
9⅝ inch, 24.4 cm high
Circa 1640
Condition: perfect.
• Formerly in a private collection, South of France.
• A Guanyin and child of similar style was included by S. Marchant & Son in their exhibition of Blanc de Chine, June 1994, no.9, p.23, another from the H.M. Knight collection was included by P. J. Donnelly in Blanc de Chine plate 72A.
• Another similar group with a boy at her feet with a gourd mark in the Musée Guimet, Paris is illustrated by P. J. Donnelly in Blanc de Chine, plate 145 C.
• Published by S. Marchant & Son in their exhibition catalogue Blanc de Chine, 2006, no.16.
R7349 A Chinese late Ming Blanc de Chine Guanyin seated on rockwork holding a boy on her lap, wearing long flowing robes extending to a cowl, with detailed hair and ornament, covered in a cream glaze.
7⅛ Inches, 18.1 cm high.
Circa 1650
Condition: perfect.
• Formerly in a French collection.
• A similar larger Guanyin in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bequest of the widow of H. K. Westendorp, 1968, on long term loan from the Society of Friends of Asiatic Art is illustrated by Christian J. A. Jörg in Chinese Ceramics no.282, p.245.
• Published by S. Marchant & Son in their exhibition catalogue Blanc de Chine, 2006, no.28.
M1474 A pair of Chinese Blanc de Chine standing figures of a man and woman, draped in a cloth and bare from the waist up, wearing bracelets, on rockwork bases, covered in a creamy white glaze.
9⅛ inches, 23.2 cm high.
Kangxi, circa 1690
Condition: perfect.
• Formerly in the Arens collection, France.
• Traditionally these figures are known as Adam and Eve. Usually the female figure is depicted with the same hairstyle as the male; in this case the female has a European style high piled coiffure.
• A similar pair from the Koger Collection, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida, are illustrated by John Ayers in Blanc de Chine, Divine Images in Porcelain, no.55, p.104, another pair with Chinese hairstyles from the collection of John T. Dorrance Jr, Gladwyne, Pennsylvania were included by S. Marchant & Son in their exhibition of Blanc de Chine, June 1994, no.20, p.30, another pair are illustrated by David Howard and John Ayers in China for the West, Volume One, no.54, p.93 where the author states 'Two sizes of the female figure are recorded in the first year of the Dresden Inventory, 1721'.
• Published by S. Marchant & Son in their exhibition catalogue Blanc de Chine, 2006, no.40.
 "The Ditchley Park Mirror
by John Linnell")
