Combining Old Masters and fine furniture

Antique furniture specialists Norman Adams and art gallery Rafael Valls are combining examples from their collections to provide an unusual, but interesting exhibition of antique furniture and Old Master paintings.

The exhibition, entitled, Completing the Picture, illustrates the perfect partnership that English antique furniture and Old Master paintings can achieve with hand-picked pieces by leading eighteenth and nineteenth century cabinet-makers, including Henry Hill of Marlborough and Gillows, as well as Old Master paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, including Sir Thomas Lawrence, Laurens Craen, Jan van Bylert and Jan Josefsz van Goyen.

Pictured above is a still life of peaches, grapes and a melon on a silver plate on a wooden table from 1649 by Dutch Master Laurens Craen, which will hang above a c.1750 Irish mahogany side table, with an apron carved with flowers, acanthus and a classical mask. A 19th century marble bust of the young Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius attributed to Ottavio Giovannozzi of Settignano near Florence, will sit upon the table.

The image on the right shows one of a pair of river landscapes with figures sitting on the rocks by waterfalls by 18th century french school oil master Claude Louis Chatelet with a George III painted bow-fronted commode of shallow proportions, circa 1780 in the neoclassical taste popularized by Robert Adam. The ‘grotesque’ decoration on the pilasters in the ancient Roman style revived by Raphael, is particularly fine. The doors, with their central theatrical prints, enclose oak-lined drawers.

Completing the Picture will run from 7th-23rd November 2007 at Norman Adams (nr Harrods). For more information visit www.normanadams.com and www.rafaelvalls.co.uk