A SET OF SIX GREEN AND POLYCHROME PAINTED DINING CHAIRSMID 18TH CENTURYEach with a shaped vertical splat and drop in seat, together with a pair of later chairs to match (8)Provenance:Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969), the dining room at 2 Carlyle Square, LondonThence by descent at Weston Hall Catalogue Note:This set of green and polychrome-painted dining chairs with ornamentation by the painter, illustrator and theatre designer, Roland Pym (d. 2006), was in the collection of Osbert (1892-1969) and Sacheverell (1897-1988) Sitwell in the dining room at no. 2 Carlyle Square, Chelsea, where they were photographed by Barbara Ker-Seymer for Harpers' Bazaar in 1933 (L. Mynott, 'Unity in Diversity: Edith, Osbert & Sacheverell Sitwell, Interior Innovators', The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1890-1940, 1984, p. 34, plate 3). The Sitwells moved to Carlyle Square in November 1919 where Osbert created 'a literary and artistic Mecca, a flowered pavilion' in which to entertain in (ibid., p. 29). Chelsea was the fashionable place for artists and writers, and the 'bohemian, smarty-arty set', and it was cheap (ibid.). Although she was yet to establish herself as an interior designer, the Sitwells were friendly with Sybil Colefax, who lived at nearby Argyll House in the King's Road. Meanwhile, the Sitwells were already being noticed for their 'unusual and modish tastes' (ibid.). A dining suite, folding screen and a painted desk by Roger Fry's Omega Workshops were installed at Osbert's first London home at Swan Walk. The Sitwells favoured 'bright and violent colour combinations' undoubtedly inspired by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (ibid., p. 31), in addition to Osbert's collection of contemporary British paintings and Vorticist and Futurist paintings. At Carlyle Square, while Edith Sitwell often played host, Osbert and Sacheverell charmed and amused their avant-garde guests with witty repartée. Cecil Beaton recalled 'No detail of their life was ugly or humdrum... A whole new world of sensibility was opened to me while sitting in candlelight around the marble dining-table in Osbert's house in Chelsea. Here, it seemed, witty observations and an appreciation of dolphin furniture were more important than anything' (ibid., p. 32). The dining room was the room that most guests remembered; in the mid-1920s, it was described as 'sub-aqueous, at moments one felt one was in an aquarium - the walls were almost iridescent' (ibid., p. 35). This was an allusion to the silvery-Aquamarine lamé wall covering and strange Venetian mirrors - 'carouched and dripping with gilded stalactites' (ibid.). The chairs offered here with their marine painting of seahorses, dolphins, scallop shells and fishing nets were evidently ornamented by Pym in this fashion for this room - albeit that they may have been introduced in the 1930s rather than the 1920s when the room was described as having 'conch-shaped silver chairs' - these belonged to a set of Venetian grotto furniture (ibid.). Pym whose work resembled that of Rex Whistler, is better known for the striking black and white illustrations he produced for Edith Sitwell's English Eccentrics (1933) and Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate (1949).These chairs came to Weston Hall when Francis (d. 2004) and Susanna Sitwell married in 1966 and took on the house 15 years later. In need of furniture they were invited by Osbert to go to his store and select what they wanted. They later had two additional chairs made for the set, and commissioned Pym, the original artist, to paint them to match the earlier six chairs.