Chaise longue

Among the furniture purchased for Łańcut by Izabela Lubomirska née Czartoryska is a mahogany chaise longue with rung backrest, set on a platform surrounded by an openwork balustrade (S.435 – 436MŁ). This set of two pieces of furniture is described in the two oldest preserved inventories of the Łańcut castle from the first years of the 19th c. To this day, both items are in the ground floor apartment located in the northeastern corner of the castle. In the time of the Potocki family, in the 2nd half of the 19th c., the suite was referred to as the Turkish Apartment. The earliest known interior arrangement of the apartment was designed in the 1780s, during the modernisation of the Łańcut residence implemented by the last members of the Lubomirski family. After the death of Stanisław Lubomirski in 1783 and her return from travels abroad in 1791, Princess Marshal made it into a kind of a souvenir 'museum'. While implementing the last stage of the modernisation and expansion of the Łańcute castle, Izabela Lubomirska was not only influenced by Roman antiquity but also by the impression her 1787 trip to England made on her. Because of this, the furnishings of the apartment evoked the atmosphere of the English classicist interiors of the era. They were inspired by both the art of antiquity and by the fashion for the broadly understood Oriental culture. Modelled on English classicism, the chaise longue in combination with the platform is distinctive for its Oriental style. The items constitute a coherent whole. They complement a larger sofa made in the same period, that has similar rung backrests decorated with gilded bronze, as well as a set of furniture with traditional prints on the backrests (S.440-444MŁ; S.2320-2321MŁ). In the 2nd half of the 19th century, the upholstery of the chaise longue was replaced with a woollen one with a pattern of red and black stripes. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967