Easy Chair

On February 22, 1827, the Albany cabinetmaker John Meads billed George Clarke for “an Easy Chair” at a cost of $30. The chair is a neoclassical design with a contiguous U-shaped back and sides derived from Greek and Roman forms in marble. Clarke chose to use his new easy chair at his desk and commissioned Samuel F.B. Morse to depict him seated in it with some books and papers in his 1829 portrait. His grandson, George Hyde Clarke “The Gentleman,” continued the tradition and a sketch by Ellen Emmet Rand in 1894 shows him seated at his desk in the same chair.