Side chair

This chair represents the height of the Rococo style in colonial Boston.  Closely based on English examples, the chair originally was owned by Moses Gill, of Boston and Princeton, Massachusetts. Gill was a prosperous hardware merchant and a political official who served as lieutenant governor and acting governor of Massachusetts. He was married to Nicholas Boylston's sister Rebecca, whose portrait is on view in the Copley Gallery. 

The exuberant Rococo style flourished almost simultaneously in England and her American colonies. This chair, made in Boston, illustrates one of the primary means of the style's transfer and cultural diffusion: imported objects.The chair, one of a large set, was once owned by Moses Gill, a wealthy hardware merchant in Boston and Princeton, Massachusetts. Through his business and social connections in the city and political activity leading up to the Revolution, Gill may have known William Phillips, a fellow Boston merchant who owned a strikingly similar chair that had been imported from London. Although the proportions, secondary woods, and quality of the carving differ, the same intricate, ribbonlike seat back, stop-fluted rear posts, and unusual hairy-paw feet of both chairs suggests that the American example was made by someone who had access to, or was familiar with, the London chair. This text was adapted from Ward, et al., MFA Highlights: American Decorative Arts & Sculpture (Boston, 2006) available at www.mfashop.com/mfa-publications.html.