Research Notes:
June 2024

Before Dr. Albert Barnes purchased the chairs in 1939, they belonged to Percival Roberts, Jr. (1857–1943), president of Pencoyd Iron Works¹ located just outside Philadelphia in Bala Cynwyd, across the Schuylkill River from Manayunk. Around 1901–4, Roberts had purchased or commissioned 12 upholstered armchairs from the Duveen Brothers art and antique firm.² Six of the armchairs appear in a photograph taken in the great hall of his family’s estate, Penshurst, around 1905 (fig. 1).

Penshurst’s unique history explains how the armchair set ended up at the Barnes. The 75-room mansion was commissioned by Roberts and completed around 1902 in Narberth, Pennsylvania. The Boston-based interior design firm Irving & Casson oversaw the furnishings and may have facilitated the armchairs’ purchase.³ Between 1938 and 1939, Roberts entered several legal battles with Lower Merion Township over its desire to build an incinerator near his estate. His concern over the incinerator’s smoke and odor prompted Roberts to submit an appeal after a January 29 ruling in favor of the township. The battle ultimately went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which, on March 22, 1939, ruled in favor of the township.⁴ This final decision prompted Roberts to sell his mansion, perhaps out of spite, to a demolition company for $1,000, leading to its destruction.

After Roberts’s appeal in late January, he initiated the sale of all of the estate’s furniture, paintings, and decorative arts.⁵ In February 1939, Dr. Barnes purchased two “Set[s] of Six Important William and Mary Oak Needlepoint Chairs” removed from The Percival Roberts, Jr. Collection, in an auction held at Samuel T. Freeman & Co. art galleries in Philadelphia (fig. 2).⁶ It is possible that Dr. Barnes purchased these sets due to his familiarity with Duveen Brothers and its reputation for selling high-quality paintings and furnishings.⁷ According to the auction catalogue, the armchairs were among several pieces in Penshurst originally purchased from Duveen Brothers.⁸

When the set entered the Barnes collection, several of the chairs went on view on the balcony; the others were placed in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Barnes, adjacent to the gallery building (later used as the administrative building) (fig. 3). By installing the two sets in separate locations, Dr. Barnes disassociated the armchairs from their original relationship, which is one of the reasons scholarship on the objects has been limited until now.

Archival Insights and the Duveen Brothers’ Process

Though the tapestry covers suggest an early European origin, the construction of the chairs gives the impression of a later manufacture date. The frames and individual parts feature smooth cuts and uniform construction, unlike 18th-century chairs, which often retain evidence of hand manufacture. The auction catalogue listed “Duveen Brothers, Inc.” as the manufacturer, and further research revealed more about the firm and its complex furniture and design network.

Duveen Brothers was a prominent art and antique dealing firm established in 1868 by Joseph Duveen (1843–1908) and his younger brother Henry (1854–1919). Initially based in England—first Hull, then London—the firm primarily dealt in “old furniture, tapestries, and china.”⁹ By 1879, the firm opened a New York location, hoping to profit from the high demand for fine art and furniture in America. Duveen Brothers would help set the standard and taste for art and antiques in the early 20th century, especially for wealthy Americans.

The dealers had a premier reputation for their alluring inventory displays of authentic, high-quality stock. However, they actively dealt in copies, or period reproductions, that mimicked furniture of an earlier period but were marketed as authentic. The firm's archival records do not explicitly mention terms like “fake” or “copy.” Instead, words like “reproduction,” “reproduction copied from,” or “improvement” suggest that material and decorative changes were applied to objects to give the reproductions a more authentic and “truthful” appearance (fig. 4,5).¹⁰ Clients were likely unaware of these alterations when purchasing objects marketed as antiques.

Charlotte Vignon, author of Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts (2019), suggests that the firm’s success was due to its employment of highly skilled restorers and experts to produce and modify decorative objects.¹¹ The firm often purchased original and reproduction objects from English and Continental centers, shipping them to its New York gallery, where a sizable team of artisans worked to heighten the objects’ sense of authenticity. According to Vignon, “Beginning in the early 20th century, Joseph Duveen rarely sold an object without it being restored beforehand.”¹² Paintings would be cleaned and restored to their “original” appearance while decorative arts restoration projects were accessed case-by-case. These restorations ranged from revarnishing and reattaching hardware to halving a table to produce two new forms. The design firm of Carlhian & Beaumetz (Paris, 1867–1975) and Charles Allom of White Allom & Co., London, frequently partnered with Duveen Brothers on its antiques and reproductions.

Author Meryle Secrest notes that the sparse records available from Duveen Brothers make it difficult to determine the extent of the sales history before World War I.¹³ Digging into extant archives indicated a close partnership between Duveen Brothers and Carlhian & Beaumetz. Still, less was known about its work with White Allom & Co. (fig. 6).¹⁴ Fortunately, Duveen's London and Paris stock books confirm the types of goods sourced from each firm. Several records of tapestry-covered chair sets—usually four, six, or twelve chairs—appear in the London stock books. The 1895–96 Paris stock book suggests that high quantities of tapestries, velvet, and other upholstery textiles were coming through Carlhian & Beaumetz.¹⁵ Duveen Brothers, White Allom & Co., and Carlhian & Beaumetz worked in tandem as independent firms to produce and circulate authentic and reproduction decorative arts to their wealthy American clientele. The design firms produced chair frames onto which Duveen Brothers upholstered individually purchased tapestries.¹⁶ It is difficult to determine the appropriate maker attributions, assemblage processes, and the exchange of materials used to produce the armchairs without documented production processes.

Tapestries, Revivalism, and the Barnes Armchairs

Research on Duveen Brothers suggests it frequently purchased or used tapestries featuring cartoons by Francois Boucher, Philippe de Lasalle, and Jean-Baptiste Oudry. Some of the purchased textiles came from the Beauvais Manufactory (Beauvais, France) and the Royal Aubusson Factory (Creuse, France), which produced pastoral and allegorical imagery similar to what appears on the Barnes armchairs. These firms and artists appear throughout Duveen’s inventory records in London and Paris stock and ledger books. The Paris shop was the primary purchaser of large quantities of textiles and tapestries for chair reupholstery. Some archival photographs of the shop show the textiles and chairs before the upholstery work (fig. 7, 8).

The early 20th-century taste for furniture upholstery grew from interest in 17th and 18th-century English upholstery. Petit-point tapestry became even more popular during the William and Mary (reign 1689–1702), Queen Anne (1702–14), and George I (1714–27) periods, which aligns with the stylistic elements found in the Barnes armchair frames.¹⁷ This information suggests that the chairs were produced or assembled in London—White Allom & Co.’s shop—using English construction, stylistic forms, and textile production, even if the textiles’ themes borrowed from French tapestry designs.

By the time the Barnes armchairs were assembled, Duveen Brothers had established an international flow of goods from London and Europe to the United States. Its frequent purchase of separate chair tapestries suggests a tendency to reuse earlier-period tapestries to upholster modern chair frames—the objective being to fashion “authentic” or reproduction chairs for wealthy clientele on both sides of the Atlantic. Duveen Brothers did not identify its objects as revival pieces. Nevertheless, the armchairs align with revivalism, given their unique combination of early, modern, and restored features to model an older aesthetic. Revivalism is a feature of the Victorian style, which was popular after Queen Victoria died in 1901—around the time the Duveen armchairs were purchased for Penshurst.¹⁸ Victorian revivalism incorporated stylistic elements found in Elizabethan and Renaissance designs.

The tapestries’ style is still undetermined, although the textiles resemble 17th-century European tapestries that primarily incorporate needlework techniques. The armchairs’ form and style echo an early period of English design between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries. This period included the “long Baroque” period, which is demonstrated by features seen on this English side chair (fig. 9): prominently turned balusters, elaborate stretcher, natural/floral motifs, and the proportionately tall ratio of height to width. The mishmash of styles on the Barnes armchairs suggests a desire on the part of Americans to display early English furniture within a new 20th-century context. As the armchairs demonstrate, revivalism in furniture and architecture is not meant to duplicate an earlier style’s form, craftsmanship, and materials. Instead, including key design elements and borrowing across earlier eras makes each piece of revivalist furniture or architecture unique and reflective of its contemporary moment.

The tapestry armchairs in the Barnes collection represent the early 20th-century revivalist period in the United States. While most people associate this moment with the Colonial Revival, which revived early American furniture and construction, English and European decorative forms grew in popularity between the 1830s and 1920s. The revivalist period sparked a fast-growing market for antiques, be they authentic, reproductions, or fakes. Vignon noted that fakes and the flooded market for fakes correlated with the growing interest in antiques and authenticity and changing tastes among American elites.¹⁹

Though Duveen Brothers did not intentionally sell fakes, its mass production of reproductions is a testament to the enthusiasm for furniture informed by revival styles that evoked a fashionable, contemporary sensibility.²⁰ The set of tapestry armchairs Dr. Barnes acquired represents the history of early 20th-century revivalism in the United States. Though the Barnes Foundation Archives contained a lone invoice, scrutinizing its content revealed an unexpected history of revivalism and a transatlantic network of antiques and reproductions. The curious armchairs on the balcony now fit aesthetically into the ensembles and Dr. Barnes’s collecting habits of the early 20th century.

endnotes