A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

The Furniture History Society

A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSORAuthor(s): Hugh RobertsSource: Furniture History, Vol. 33 (1997), pp. 177-187Published by: The Furniture History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23408093 .

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A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

By Hugh Roberts

George Ill's decision to give Queen Anne's old house, lying just to the south of Windsor

Casde, to Queen Charlotte in 1776 has generally been seen as the first indication of the

King's intent to reinstate Windsor as the principal non-metropolitan residence of the

Royal Family.1 Over the next two decades, a great deal of money was spent on

improvements and extensions to this unremarkable building, re-christened The Queen's or Upper Lodge.2 At the same time, a programme of cautious modernization and

improvement was started on the north side of the Quadrangle in the King's State

Apartment. This work eventually grew to include a new suite of rooms for the Queen's

private use at the northern end of the east front. As Comptroller and (from 1782) Surveyor of the King's Works, Sir William Chambers was in overall charge of such projects. However, his involvement with Somerset House from the mid-1770s meant that much

royal (and private) work was delegated to his assistant John Yenn, who also held the Office of Works post of Clerk of the Works at The Queen's (i.e. Buckingham) House, the

Mews, Kensington Palace and Carlton House.

This now largely forgotten chapter in the history of Windsor Castle provides both an

interesting parallel to George Ill's more extensive attempts to 'scrub with a neo-classic

brush'3 the Baroque interiors of Buckingham House in the 1760s and 1770s, and a marked

contrast with his determination in the first years of the nineteenth century to turn Windsor

into a Gothic palace. But the records for the work at Windsor are sparse and the physical

changes to the Castle since that time have been very extensive. The Queen's Lodge, for

example, where the King, Queen Charlotte and the elder princesses were closely involved

in the design and decoration,4 was demolished by George IV in 1823, and no views of the interiors are known. Work on the State Apartments is patchily documented and much of

the cost seems to have been borne by the King's Privy Purse.5 James Wyatt's Gothic work

for George III in the first years of the nineteenth century introduced further substantial

alterations to the State Apartments, which in turn were largely obliterated by Jeffry

Wyatville in the 1830s.

Apart from the disbursements summarized in The History of the King's Works,6 the

only significant record of George Ill's work at Windsor is contained in the first volume of W. H. Pyne's seminal three-volume History of the Royal Residences, published in 1819. In the King's Apartment it is possible to distinguish some of the improvements of the 1780s and 1790S among the later work by Wyatt, notably in the Closet (Figure 1), the Dressing Room and State Bedchamber, the Drawing Room, and the Audience Chamber (Figure 2).

The early alterations to these rooms were cautious and conservative, chiefly consisting of the replacement of panelling by silk or cloth and the introduction of pier-glasses, new

seat furniture and a number of elegant glass chandeliers. Of these rooms in the King's

Apartment, the scheme of decoration for the Audience Chamber was far the most

elaborate, carried out, as Pyne notes (p. 166), 'under the direction of his Majesty . . . with

great elegance'. A new marble chimney-piece was installed in 1786,7 new architectural

gilding was introduced, and the walls were hung with Garter blue silk, edged with flowers,



178 A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

Figure i . Charles Wild, The King's Closet, Windsor Castle, watercolour (engraved by W. I. Bennett and published ι October 1816). Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RL 22104)

in preparation for the reception of Benjamin West's set of medieval history pictures illustrating the foundation of the Order of the Garter.8 But the most striking addition to

the room, occupying the centre of Pyne's plate, was the 'canopy and its appendages',9

which Pyne describes (p. 166) in unusual detail. This was

wrought under the direction of Mrs. Pawsey, from designs by Miss Mozer, now Mrs.

Lloyd, R.A.; the chair of state is the work of Mr. Campbell; and the paintings which ornament the gold columns were executed by Rebecca, under the direction of Mr.

West, who painted the medallion with profiles of their Majesties.

In the absence of bills,10 this useful description identifies the cabinet-maker Robert

Campbell,11 whose role as throne maker may have extended to the manufacture of the

canopy frame and back and to the accompanying stools and window seat shown in Pyne's

plate. Campbell's upholstery skills, well tested by the Prince of Wales at Carlton House,12 were doubtless also employed in the dressing of the canopy with the flower-embroidered

silk, worked by Mrs Pawsey's 'Royal school of embroidering females' to Mary Moser's

designs.13



A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR 179

Charles Wild, The King's Audience Chamber, Windsor Castle, watercolour

(engraved by T. Sutherland and published 7 February 1818). Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RL 22109)

Although the throne itself is no longer extant, the canopy, shorn of its original

hangings, cresting and back is probably that now in the Garter Throne Room (a Wyatville alteration of the early 1830s combining the old Presence Chamber with part of the Audience Chamber) (Figure 3). Giltwood stools approximating to those shown by Pyne also survive at Windsor as do mahogany stools of the type shown in the Old State Bedchamber and elsewhere (Figures 4 and 5), all presumably supplied as part of this

campaign in the late 1780s and early 1790s.

However, the most interesting survivals from this work in the King's Apartment are

undoubtedly the three oval giltwood mirrors from the original four (Figure 6), provided for the King's Dressing Room and Closet (Figure 1). What makes these particularly worthy of notice is the existence of a design by John Yenn (Figure 8) which, though itself

undated, belongs to a sequence of drawings for Windsor, now divided between the Royal Library and the Royal Academy of Arts, dated from 9 October 1794 to 18 November

1795.14 This immaculately executed drawing, scaled and supplied with a detail and section,



i8o A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

Figure 3 (left). Giltwood

canopy probably made for

The King's Audience Chamber, c. 1790, now in

the Garter Throne Room,

Windsor Castle (inventory no. 35805)

Figure 4 (below left). One of a set of giltwood stools,

perhaps made for The

King's Audience Chamber,

Windsor Castle, c. 1790. Windsor Castle (inventory no. 20463)

Figure 5 (below right). One of a set of mahogany stools made for the State

Apartments, Windsor

Castle, c. 1790. Windsor

Castle (inventory no. 20625)

is inscribed 'N° 4 of these Oval Glass Frames for His Majesty — two for the Dressing Room, the other Two for the Kings Closet Windsor Castle'. Below, Yenn has written:

Mr Lawrence is desired to forward these frames with all expedition and for them to be

executed in the very best Manner. Mr Campbell Upholsterer in Leicester Square must

be Consulted as to the oval form and Size of the Glasses as he is to provide the Same.

From this instruction, some idea of the relative importance of the various participants in the commission can be gauged. Yenn, unlike his imperious master Chambers in similar



Figure 6 (above left). One of three surviving giltwood oval pier glasses from a set of four

designed by John Yenn; the frames carved by Richard Lawrence; the mirror plates supplied

by Robert Campbell, c. 1794—95. Windsor Castle (inventory no. 53003)

Figure 7 (above right). Detail of Figure 6

J¡Tj4 _ .(-.τ· -.^.Síní'-f /jr-K. ,lnir » ··» f?o - rÛ~f*£&*/. r: ..·'^ xjfli. .

lf?It

Figure 8. John Yenn, scaled and annotated design (with detail and section) for a pier glass, two for The King's Dressing Room and two for The King's Closet, Windsor Castle,

watercolour, pen and ink, c. 1794—95. Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RL 18728)



i82 A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

situations,15 seems implicitly to have been content to allow some deference to Campbell:

even though the dimensions of the glass are clearly stated by Yenn, the carver Richard

Lawrence is to 'consult' Campbell who is to provide the glass which would almost

certainly have been the most costly part of the commission. Lawrence, of Wardour

Street,16 had been apprenticed in 1742 to Sefferin Aiken,17 whose work for Adam and

Chambers marks him out as one of the most distinguished ornamental carvers in the

Neoclassical style. The cutting and finish of these frames (Figure 7) is of precisely the same

quality that Aiken regularly achieved; but as has been noted elsewhere,18 Yenn's designs

are strikingly old-fashioned for the 1790s.

Ephemeral as much of Yenn's work in the State Apartments was to prove, there were

some yet more transient additions to the decoration. As part of the celebrations marking

the twenty-ninth birthday of the Prince of Wales on 12 August 1791, and the same event

a year later, the King ordered the floor of the King's Guard Chamber to be given an

elaborate temporary decoration. On both occasions Richard Rimington was employed

first to paint a design in distemper and then to clean off the floor afterwards.19 On the

second occasion, the requirement was 'Painting ... in Mosaick Work', and for this Yenn's

design, dated 5 August 1792 (but based on a Batty Langley engraving of 1736), has survived.20 Two more designs by Yenn for the same type of floor decoration in

unidentified rooms, one dated 1788, form part of the Windsor group of Yenn drawings.21

Much the most extensive of Yenn's work for George III at Windsor, however, was

the creation of a new Music Room and Drawing Room for Queen Charlotte. This

involved the re-modelling of part of a suite which, in the previous reign, had nominally been reserved for George Ill's parents, Frederick Prince of Wales and his wife Augusta.

The choice of these east-facing rooms, looking out through Hugh May's round-headed

windows across the gently sloping park, marks the beginning of permanent royal

occupation of the eastern range of the Upper Ward of the Castle and a decisive shift away

from the old State Apartments.

Yenn's designs are presented in the form of eight attractively finished coloured

elevations in wash borders (four for each room). The charm is considerably heightened by the inclusion of imaginative landscape vistas, chiefly wooded hills and ruins, seen through the windows. In addition there are numerous carefully measured elevations, some

annotated with calculations and directions to joiners and plasterers,22 together with a

number of meticulously scaled details of architectural features such as chimney-pieces,

friezes and mouldings, etc. Old-fashioned in many ways, the designs consistently look

back to Chambers's work of the 1760s and 1770s. Even the suggested colour schemes seem

archaic when compared with the pale colours and toned gilding favoured by Henry Holland and his circle. In the Music Room, for example, Yenn indicates blue wall panels

framed by pink-ground pilaster strips and shades of grey for the doors, dado and woodwork

(Figure 9); in the Drawing Room there are biscuit-coloured panels on a pea-green ground with pale lilac, biscuit and off-white woodwork (Figures 12—13).

Virtually nothing beyond what is shown in the elevations is recorded of the original furnishing of these rooms, though it is known that by 1804 the King intended to have

Roubiliac's bust of Handel placed on a bracket above the chimney-piece in the Music

Room; and a harpsichord (doubtless Handel's own instrument, given to the King by



Figure 9. John

Yenn, design for south

elevation of Queen Charlotte's Music

Room, Windsor

Castle, watercolour,

pen and ink, dated

1794. Royal Library, Windsor Castle

(RL 18690)

Figure io. John Yenn, design for a

pier glass, one of two for Queen Charlotte's Music Room, Windsor

Castle, watercolour, pen and ink,

c. 1794—95. Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RL 18693)

Figure i i . John Yenn, scaled and annotated

design for a pier glass, one of two for Queen Charlotte's Drawing Room, Windsor Castle, pen

and ink and pencil, dated 18 November 1795.

Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RL 18712)



i84 A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

Figure 12. John Yenn, design for west elevation of Queen Charlotte's Drawing

Room, Windsor Castle, watercolour, pen and ink, dated 1795.

Royal Academy of Arts (6.B.14 e)

Figure i 3. John Yenn, design for the east elevation of Queen Charlotte s

Drawing Room, Windsor Castle, watercolour, pen and ink, dated 1795.

Royal Academy of Arts (6.B.14 d)




Handel's pupil J. C. Smith) was also in the room at that date.23 At the southern end,

framed by two double doors, Yenn placed a chamber organ (Figure 9), and between the windows a pair of gilt pier glasses. Two detailed drawings, varying somewhat from those shown in the elevation, also survive, giving a clearer indication of the finely detailed flower and foliage carving with which Yenn intended to embellish the otherwise plain fluted frames of the glasses (Figure 10). Neither the organ nor the pier glasses are known

to survive.

In the Drawing Room, a rather more fanciful scheme was envisaged in the four

'presentation' drawings, incorporating grisaille roundels of allegorical subjects, wall panels with elaborately inverted corners, two full-length sculptures after the Antique on pedestals

standing in niches (Figure 12)24 and a pair of oval pier glasses of unusual design with small detached circular plates set above within a framework of laurel (Figure 13). A rather more

sedately panelled alternative scheme is shown in two further coloured and measured

elevations25 and it may be that this less ambitious scheme was chosen. However, the pier

glasses re-appear, like those in the Music Room, in two further drawings, one (Figure 11)

carefully annnotated and measured, and they may well have been executed. If so, no trace

of them has been found.26

Yenn's work on these two rooms, though more extensive than his work in the State

Apartments, proved if anything even more transitory. James Wyatt substantially altered

the Drawing Room and modified the Music Room in 1804—05,27 and whatever survived

was swept away in its entirety by Wyatville in the 1820s when he set about creating a new

range of sumptuously decorated Private Apartments for George IV.

PHOTOGRAPHIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Royal Collection © 1996 Her Majesty The Queen: Figures 1—11

Royal Academy of Arts: Figures 12-13

REFERENCES

Abbreviations

P.R.O. Public Record Office, London

RL Royal Library, Windsor RA Royal Archives, Windsor

1 The History ofTlie King's Works, ed. by H. M. Colvin (London: HMSO, 1963-82), vi (1973), 373-75.

2 Ibid., ν (1976), 338-40·

3 John Harris, Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Oliver Millar, Buckingham Palace (London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1968),

p. 24. The most accurate modern account of this work is contained in G.Jackson-Stops, ' "A noble simplicity":

Pyne's views of Buckingham House', in Buckingham Palace: A Complete Guide (London: Apollo Magazine, !993)> ΡΡ- 44-56· Yenn's work of the late 1780s is discussed by Jane Roberts, 'Sir William Chambers and

George III', in Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III, ed. by John Harris and Michael Snodin, exhibition

catalogue, The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, London (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,

1996), pp. 47-48· 4

Olwen Hedley, Queen Charlotte (London: John Murray, 1975), p. 118. 5

The King's Works (see note 1), vi, 374; the Privy Purse records for George Ill's reign after 1772 are virtually non-existent.

6 The King's Works (see note 1), vi, 373-79.



186 A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR

7 It was installed by the mason John Slingsby who charged £3 8s. η\ά. (P.R.O.: Work 5/75, qtr to

September 1786). It was probably removed by Wyatville in the 1830s. An almost identical chimney-piece (perhaps the same one) is now in the Admiral's Study at Greenwich (information from Dr Giles Worsley). 8 Painted in 1787—89 (Oliver Millar, Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen

(London: Phaidon Press, 1969), pp. xviii-xix and nos 1158-64). 9 A throne design in the Royal Academy of Arts attributed to Yenn (B.17), showing an oversized chair

framed by pilasters, below a profile medallion of George III and a domed canopy with the royal arms, may have been intended as an alternative for the King's Audience Chamber. 10

As previously noted, the Privy Purse accounts for the period are missing, the Works accounts contain almost nothing related to Yenn's work at Windsor, and the Lord Chamberlain's accounts remain silent in the

period 1785—1800. The only exceptions are very occasional references to furnishing supplied by Beckwith and France and joinery by John Russell for the Upper and Lower Lodges (e.g. P.R.O.: LC9/336, qtr to January 1789; LC9/337, qtr to January 1790; LC9/338, qtrs to April, July and October 1790; qtr to January 1791; LC9/366, qtr to October 1791; qtr to June 1792; LC9/387, qtr to July 1799 and qtr to October 1800). Yenn's work at Buckingham House in the late 1780s (e.g. in the Saloon) is equally poorly documented. 11

Of Porter Street and subsequently 33 Marylebone Street (Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, ed. by Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (Leeds: W. S. Maney & Son / Furniture History Society, 1986), pp. 142-43)· 12

Carlton House: The Past Glories of George IV's Palace, exhibition catalogue, The Queen's Gallery, London

(1991), pp. 38, 40 and 102. 13 An account of Queen Charlotte's patronage of the school of embroidery in Great Newport Street (adjacent

to Campbell in Newport Market) run by Mrs Wright and (after 1778) by Mrs Pawsey, is contained in Olwen

Hedley, op. cit. (see note 4), pp. 91, 130, 260 and 319. Flower embroideries (probably from the canopy) survive, as Hedley points out, on the polonaise bed in the State Bedchamber at Windsor; they were placed there by J. D. Crace for the State Visit of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie in 1855 ( The Craces, ed. by Megan Aldrich (Brighton: Brighton City Art Gallery, 1990), pp. 97-98). 14 The relevant drawings at Windsor have the inventory numbers RL 18683-18723 inclusive; the Royal

Academy of Arts drawings are referenced B. 14 a-e. 15

Hugh Roberts, 'Sir William Chambers and Furniture', in Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III (see note 3), p. 147. 16

Dictionary of English Furniture Makers (see note 11), p. 531; and The History of the King's Works (see note 1), ν (1976), 340. 17

Dictionary of English Furniture Makers (see note 11),p. 8. 18

Hugh Roberts, ' "Nicely fitted up": Furniture for the 4th Duke of Marlborough', Furniture History, 30

(1994), 147, note 73. 19

P.R.O.: Work 5/80, Michalemas qtr 1791; Work 5/81, Midsummer qtr 1792. Both entries include

payment for other work; but in the earlier account Rimington charged 2 10s. 'for Painting the old floor' and

£1 7s. 3 d. for '109 yds twice done in Distemper'. 20 In the Royal Academy of Arts (Yenn Drawings, B.18). Reproduced in Christopher Gilbert, James Lomax

and Anthony Wells-Cole, Country House Floors, 1660—1850 (Leeds: Leeds City Art Galleries, 1987), fig. 63. 21 Windsor Castle: RL 18732-33.

22 On one drawing (Windsor Castle: RL 18764) Yenn instructs 'Mr. Tebbott' (probably Obadiah Tebbott,

the carpenter engaged on work in the State Apartments in 1790 (P.R.O.: Work 5/79, qtr to Lady Day) ) to

proceed immediately with work on the rafters of the Music Room; on another (Windsor Castle: RL 18714), reference is made to the sculptor Richard Hayward, a regular member of Chambers's team (Rupert Gunnis,

Dictionary of British Sculptors, rev. edn (London: The Abbey Library, 1968), pp. 194—95), in connection with the chimney-piece in the Drawing Room. 23

Windsor Castle: BJ\ Add. 2/13 (quoted in The History of the King's Works (see note 1), vi, 376, note 9). 24 Comparable in style to the figures representing Muses, attributed to Joseph Wilton, from the Gallery of

Antiques at Kew. This open-air temple was designed by Chambers in 1757 for Augusta, Princess of Wales, and was demolished at the end of the eighteenth century (Joan Coutou, 'William Chambers and Joseph Wilton', in Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III (see note 3), pp. 176-78). 25

Windsor Castle: RL 18707 and 18709. 26 It has been suggested that a suite of three tables, the tops painted with allegorical scenes on a yellow

ground, might have formed part of the original furnishings of the Music or Drawing Rooms (Sir William




Chambers: Architect to George III (see note 3), p. 168). The detail of the carved laurel decoration on the drawers of the tables, taken with the colour scheme of the tops, indicates the Drawing Room as perhaps the more likely original destination. 27

The layout of the Drawing Room was substantially altered by James Wyatt late in 1804 to incorporate a

passage and a door on the west side. At the same time a door was opened in the west wall of the Music Room

( The History of the King's Works (see note 1), vi, 376, note 9). The revised groundplan is shown by D. and S.

Lysons, Magna Britannia (London, 1806), 1, facing p. 420.

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A NEOCLASSICAL EPISODE AT WINDSOR