These sophisticated chairs illustrate two distinct facets of Grecian furniture produced in New York—a small body of refined seating furniture made of maple and a larger body of furniture ornamented with landscape scenes. The Bayou Bend examples include several particular details that vary from the norm of New York Grecian chairs. The tablets, contained between the rails, are wider to accommodate the landscapes, and the usual single lyre has been replaced with a pair of smaller lyres. While front legs and stiles, as a rule, are molded or reeded, here the surface is left plain and the stiles are pierced to add visual lightness. Also unusual are the two small disks that are inserted in the pierced area of each stile. The artist who created the landscapes, each of which is different and includes romantic ruins, is unknown but was possibly the product of one of the painting academies in New York. The work parallels, although is not directly related to, the easel paintings produced by the contemporaneous Hudson River School. 

Technical notes: Marks appear as follows (inscribed in pen): B.67.27.1: on the seat frame, 4, on the seat rail, 4H; B.67.27.2: on the seat frame, NI, on the seat rail, NI. B.67.27.3: on the seat frame, 9, on the seat rail, 9; B.67.27.4: on the seat frame, 3, on the seat rail, 3. 

Related examples: Two identical chairs, formerly in a private Massachusetts collection and then with Israel Sack in 1996, have a history of ownership in the Caswell family of New York. Related examples are at Winterthur (Montgomery 1966b, no. 469); Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Tarrytown, New York, with a painted scene virtually identical to that of B.67.27.2, indicating a common source, either a painting or a print (Garrett et al. 1969, p. 302). A New York maple caned-back Grecian sofa, with a history of belonging to John Jay, now at Bayou Bend (see B.92.5), is related in concept; a mahogany pair has similar open stiles with disks (Christie’s, New York, sale 8208, June 21, 1995, lot 288).
 
Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.