The show takes as its inspiration the gentleman’s study, also known as a gentleman’s cabinet, which was very popular with men of means throughout the 19th century and continued through to the 1920s.
This was an intimate room, often out of bounds to servants, and certainly to wife and children, where a chap could retire and smoke, drink, read, write letters, play cards or even occasionally indulge in rather racier diversions.
Accoutrements and mementos of pastimes and hobbies were displayed and the London show aims to give a flavour of what has particularly interested Englishmen over the past 200 years.
Shapero, whose forte is antiquarian prints, books and vintage photographs, will offer scenes of hunting, shooting and fishing along with such sports as golf and tennis and the more sedentary pursuits of smoking, drinking and eating – rounded off, I am told, with a touch of sophisticated erotica.
The Shapero contribution is complemented by some stock from two leading antique dealers – arms and armour specialist Peter Finer, who will bring a suit of armour, swords, guns and a few hunting trophies, and John Bly, furniture specialist and Roadshow star, who will provide some study furniture and wine items.
Opening a door into the private world of Victorian gentlemen…
YOU might well detect a distinct whiff of testosterone in the air around Mayfair’s Bruton Street later this month when a selling exhibition Gentleman’s Relish: 200 Years of Machismo runs at the Shapero Gallery at No. 24 from September 24 to October 17.
