Side chair
This Louis XVI-style chair is possibly one of six "small chairs" Washington purchased from the Comte de Moustier in 1790. It was used en suite with similarly upholstered armchairs, stools, and a sofa in the New York and Philadelphia presidential residences before being sold at public auction in March 1797. The chair's molded back and seat frames, carved rosette blocks, and tapering stop-fluted legs on cylindrical bulb feet are typical of French furniture produced in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. No evidence of the original upholstery fabric, noted by Washington as "Green floured damask," survives, but recent conservation discovered fragments of a plain-woven, green-and-white checked linen that covered the chair's back.
Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), 146-7, cat. no. 41.