John and Hugh Finlay and Francis Guy
Armchair with a View of Belvidere
1802-1804
Scroll
Physical Qualities
Painted maple and ash; with polychrome and gilt decoration, 33 3/4 x 22 1/4 x 21 5/16 in. (85.7 x 56.5 x 54.1 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Lydia Howard de Roth and Nancy H. DeFord Venable in Memory of their Mother, Lydia Howard DeFord; and Purchase Fund
Object Number
1966.26.1
With its vignette of Belvidere (built c. 1790 for General John Eager Howard), this elegant armchair belongs to an important suite of American painted furniture that originally stood in the Assembly Rooms, a meeting place where the great and the good of Baltimore gathered for social pleasures doubtless mixed with business. The Finlay brothers made this chair and related furniture as a public celebration of genteel country life in elegant villas surrounding the newly prosperous city. Most of the buildings depicted on the suite are long gone (Belvidere was demolished in about 1875), so the pieces serve not only as fine art but also architectural documents.
AMW Reinstallation 2014
Katherine Scarborough, Unique Record of Baltimore Mansions, 'The Baltimore Sun,' March 1, 1936, p. 11
'BMA News,' June 1944, pp. 4-5
'Antiques,' Vol. XC, No. 3, Sept., 1966, p. 374, repro. 66.26.8
Elder, William Voss. Baltimore Painted Furniture, 1800-1840. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1972, cat no. 3, page 22.
Luke Beckerdite. American Furniture. London:Chipston Foundation, 2003, p.194, ill.
Kirtley, A. A., Olley, P. A., & Cohen, J. A. (2016). Classical splendor: Painted furniture for a grand Philadelphia house. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. p.56
William Voss Elder III and Jayne E. Stokes, American Furniture 1680-1880, Baltimore: BMA, 1987, no. 29, pp. 45-47 [BMA 1966.26.3], no. 39, pp. 59-60 [BMA 1966.26.12], no. 121, pp. 161-163 [BMA 1966.26.13].
