A distinctively carved back with a trompe l’oeil painted rendering of an urn flanked by marbleized columns distinguishes this witty chair, part of a group familiar to scholars, collectors, and dealers since the early 20th century. John Seymour, Jr. and his family immigrated from England to Maine in 1784 in search of better economic opportunities. His father and brother eventually became sought-after furniture makers in Boston, Massachusetts. The Neoclassical iconography of such elements as the urn and columns, seen here and on other works in these galleries, reference the visual cultures of ancient Greece and Rome and the 18th-century Enlightenment ideals of knowledge and reason with which those cultures became associated.