Side Chair

John Finlay

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This brilliantly conceived and handsomely executed chair derives its broad, deeply curved crest tablet from the ancient Greek klismos form, and its turned front legs from Roman prototypes. During the James Madison administration (1809–17), the architect Benjamin Latrobe designed a suite of painted furniture for the White House in the latest Grecian style. Although the suite was destroyed in a fire in 1814, drawings for it bearing Latrobe’s instructions to the Baltimore fancy chair makers John and Hugh Finlay still exist and provide the basis for this chair's attribution. Originally part of a larger set, this chair was once used by Arunah S. Abell, founder of the "Baltimore Sun," in his country house "Wood bourne." The Metropolitan owns four chairs (65.167.5, .6, .8, .9) from the set. Others are in the collections of the High Museum, Atlanta; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, New York.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art