Newport, Rhode Island or Boston, Massachusetts, 1735-1745, original maple slip seat frame with original linen undercover and webbing, double peaked crest rail, hooped upper portion to stiles, inverted baluster splat, compass seat, cabriole front legs, pad feet, shaped H stretcher and rounded bar rear stretcher, 40-1/2 x 21-1/2 x 21-1/4 in.

Provenance: Israel Sack Inc., New York, NY; Levison & Cullen Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, July 2001 (accompanied by copy of receipt for $132,000); Estate of Richard and Shirley Roberts, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Literature: Israel Sack Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, Vol. VIII (1986) p. 2354, P5887 (image reversed).

Note: This chair is of the set or a counterpart to a set of six chairs having a long history of being attributed to Job Townsend, made for the Eddy family of Warren, Rhode Island, in 1743. One chair retained by the family was noted in the early 1900s to bear a Townsend label (American Art Association Anderson Galleries, "Colonial and Early Federal Furniture... Acquired from Notable Collections by Israel Sack," no. 80); that labeled example has not resurfaced. Recent scholarship reattributes most pre-1755 chairs of this type, previously called Newport work, to Boston. Given Boston's dominant role in New England chairmaking and upholstery before 1755, a Boston origin is plausible here as well, though it remains speculative absent a labeled Boston example or construction evidence ruling out Rhode Island production.

Similar examples illustrated in American Art Association and Anderson Galleries, "One Hundred Important American Antiques", January 9, 1932, lot 80; Ralph Carpenter, Jr., The Arts and Crafts of Newport Rhode Island, 1640-1820 (1954), p. 39, fig. 13; Nancy Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (1997), pp. 26-27, cat. no. 14.