The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 24, 2024

Overmantel Decoration

Overmantel Decoration

c. 1675–77
(British, 1648–1721)
England, 17th century (Charles II)
lindenwood
Part 1: 69.3 x 178.4 cm (27 5/16 x 70 1/4 in.); Part 2: 164.5 x 27.3 cm (64 3/4 x 10 3/4 in.); Part 3: 177.8 x 26.7 cm (70 x 10 1/2 in.)
Grace Rainey Rogers Fund 1943.654
Location: 203A British Painting and Decorative Arts

Did You Know?

The swags of fruit and foliage featured in this wooden overmantel decoration evoke the bounty of the English countryside.

Description

The arrangement of architectural elements within grand interior spaces in the late 1600s and early 1700s emphasized symmetry and height. Decorative elements such as elaborately carved mantels, mirrors, paintings, and applied wall decorations were often stacked to achieve a visual focal point at one or both ends of the room. This particular overmantel decoration once hung above the fireplace in the Green Drawing Room of the Earl of Essex at Cassiobury in Watford, near London. In 1823, the British painter William Henry Hunt (1790–1864) produced a watercolor of the drawing room which featured this overmantel decoration.

Grinling Gibbons was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, of English parents. After training there as an artist, he came to England in the 1660s and soon began to work as a sculptor of interior ornament, particularly in wood. One of his first large-scale decorative projects was the series of interiors at Cassiobury House.
  • Esterly, David. Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving. London: V&A Publishing, 1998. Mentioned P 183, cat. no. 115 library.clevelandart.org
    Wilcop, Mary, Karen Bishop, Beth M. Edelstein, Colleen Snyder, and Marcus Brathwaite. "Tilia and Tilt-A-Jet: Abrasive Jet-machining Towards the Treatment and Re-mounting of a Grinling Gibbons Overmantel. Wooden Artifacts Group Postprints (2018). pp. 51-65
    "Conservation. 17th Century Meets 21st: To restore a 17th-century wood carving and simplify its installation in the new British gallery. conservators collaborated with CWRU Sears think[box].” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 38-39. Reproduced: P. 38; Mentioned: P. 38-39.
    Grinling Gibbons Society, Grinling Gibbons Online, accessed 7/2022. grinling-gibbons.org
  • British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).
    Consuming Passions: The Art of Food and Drink. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 26-October 9, 1983).
    No legacy exhibitions.
  • {{cite web|title=Overmantel Decoration|url=false|author=Grinling Gibbons|year=c. 1675–77|access-date=24 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1943.654