About this lot
Description
Attributed to Collinson & Lock, a rare walnut corner cabinet with painted panels by Charles Fairfax
the dentil moulded cornice above mirror backed shelf with open arched panels, above a pair of panelled doors painted with figures and each signed with initials 'C.F.M.', smaller carved panels below and flanking, raised on turned columnar supports with two further open shelves below
180.5 x 101 x 71cm
Literature:
Clive Edwards, Collinson & Lock, Art Furnishers, Interior Decorators and Designers 1870-1900, Matador, 2022, p.126, pl. 4.37 and p. 128, pl. 4.38 and 4.39 for similar examples
Established in 1870 by Francis Collinson and George Lock, Collinson & Lock was, for a short time, one of England’s most prestigious furnishing enterprises. The firm’s economic and reputational growth was rapid and within a year of launching its operation, the partnership had produced a luxuriously illustrated catalogue and had entered their work into a major international exposition. At the pinnacle of their success, Collinson & Lock worked with some of the most influential designers of the day, including E.W. Godwin, T.E. Collcutt, H.W. Batley and Stephen Webb - they were internationally celebrated for their production of high quality ‘art furniture’.
The concept of ‘art furniture’ had initially gained traction in tandem with the design reforms of the 1840s, which sought to produce high quality domestic wares for the rapidly growing generation of middle-class homeowners. By the 1870s, however, the idea of ‘art furniture’ had grown both in scope and ambition alongside the so-called ‘cult of beauty’ of the Aesthetic Movement. Following the dictum, ‘art for art’s sake’, proponents of the movement, such as Godwin, Morris and Rossetti, aimed to create household goods and furnishings that challenged the longstanding and strictly enforced boundaries between art and craft. Although the initial iteration of ‘art furniture’ had the middle-classes in mind, by the late 19th century these household goods were largely designed to grace the homes of the great and the good, Aesthetic patrons and connoisseurs.
For Collinson & Lock, the principles of ‘art furniture’ extended not only to the design, but also to the embellishment of their wares, as demonstrated by the painted panels of the present lot. Charles Fairfax Murray was one of a number of decorators employed by Collinson & Lock who, despite having created relatively few pieces, have since become inextricably linked with painted furniture. Perhaps the most significant contributor of painted panels, Charles Fairfax Murray, is known to have executed at least sixty compositions, most of which featured fêted women from history and mythology. Amongst these works, two painted cabinets are known to have been exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.
The Collinson & Lock stand at the Philadelphia Exhibition won widespread praise, with the 1876 publication Gems of the Centennial Exhibition noting the ‘high merit’ of design and manufacture of the firm’s ‘very elegant parlor-cabinets’. The work of Fairfax Murray was additionally admired by Walter Smith, Director of the Massachusetts School of Design. He described Fairfax Murray's work as ‘[standing] at the head of his profession’ and described it as ‘free and bold…each [panel] worthy of a separate and careful examination’. Of the two cabinets shown at the Philadelphia Exhibition, one is strikingly similar to the present lot.
The corner cabinet exhibited in Philadelphia and visible in archival photographs of the Collinson & Lock stand, appears to directly correspond to the present lot; albeit with an alternative design to the painted panels and having a galleried superstructure. The 1876 cabinet was illustrated on page 492 in Volume II of Professor Walter Smith’s 1876 publication, The Masterpieces of the Centennial International Exhibition, where it was described as ‘admirably proportioned, graceful in outline, and ornamented with taste and judgment.’ Likewise, in 2016, Christie’s sold pencil and watercolour vignettes by Fairfax Murray, titled The Four Seasons, two of which, though less highly finished, feature identical compositions to the panels in the present lot. Dated '75, it is plausible that the watercolours sold by Christie’s were preparatory works for the present lot.
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