It is natural to look for evidence of his work in the pictures of Hogarth, that acute observer, whose interiors were being painted in the debateable period, 1720-1760. The series in which we should most expect to find Chippendale furniture is 'Marriage a la Mode.' In the 'Contract' picture the chairs are upholstered in the French style, which might be anybody's. In the breakfast scene shortly after the marriage they are also upholstered, with round tops to the backs, and something in the nature of the familiar scallop-shell on the top of the cabriole legs. They have pad feet, and are of the clumsy type which we associate with Queen Anne and George 1., and to which the card-tables shown in the background also belong. A tripod table close to the countess has feet with the convex and concave curves of the end of the seventeenth century, quite removed from any known manner of Chippendale. The round-topped upholstered back appears, it may be noted, in a French engraving of the same period, 'Les Rdmois' - Contes de La Fontaine, by Nicholas Larmessin, after Lancret, 1738. In the death of the countess at her father's house in the city, the chairs are naturally more old-fashioned still, namely, leather-backed 'Crom-wellian.' The 'Marriage a la Mode' series is supposed to date 1745. It is unsafe to draw inferences from the pictures of low life, but it may be observed that in one of the Rake's Progress,' 1735, the heir sits in a spiral-turned chair of the seventeenth century, whilst in ' Orgies' the chairs are plain leather-backed. In the Election series the dinner scene shows a chair with rounded top and a solid jar splat.

In 'Chairing the Member,' the chair has spiral - turned uprights. In the portrait, engraved, of Hogarth sitting at his easel, the painter is seated on a very plain ungainly chair of the so-called Hogarth type, which is certainly not much in evidence in the other pictures. Nearest to what we know to be in Chippendale's manner is the teatable which is being kicked over in the second picture of the 'Harlot's Progress,' 1733-34. It has cabriole legs with projecting C-curves, and a border with scallop-shell corners.

It seems then that Hogarth, whom we may suppose, as the most observing pictorial satirist of the manners of his time, to have been acquainted with the latest fashions in furnishing, has little or nothing in his pictures which suggests an approach to the designs of the Director. That the subject of furniture was an interesting one to him may yet be inferred from the fact that he satirised Kent, the architect, who designed furniture amongst other things, and more conclusively from his having deliberately engraved many shapes of the cabriole leg in his famous 'Analysis of Beauty.' I think, then, that while recognising the probability that Chippendale had a transition period in which his work resembled the furniture gradually evolved from the Dutch manner of William III. and Anne, we must admit that we have little evidence of what he actually did, beyond what the Director and a few authenticated pieces, like the settee (Plate CII.2) made for the Bury family, afford us.

Plate CII. I - Settee, Mahogany, Chippendale 2 - " " "

CII. (1) Settee, mahogany. Chippendale. Henry Willett, Esq. (the late).

(2) Settee, mahogany. Chippendale. Designed by him for the Bury family of Kateshill, Bewdley. Mrs. Edmund McClure.