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Lot Essay
Denis Genty, maître in 1754.
Conceived in the full-blown Louis XV style, this elegant bureau is a superb example of Jacques Dubois' marquetry furniture executed just after 1750. It is embellished with foliate marquetry in bois-de-boût to the drawer-fronts and sides and is further enriched with ormolu mouldings framing the sinuous outline and with bold chutes and sabots cast with foliage.
Jacques Dubois probably settled in Paris in the 1720s, initially working in the workshop of his half-brother Noel Gérard, only to become a master in 1742 at the age of forty-eight. He almost certainly sold his pieces through Gérard but it is unclear how he continued to do so after the latter's death in 1736 and before he became a master. Again, he must have turned to other marchands and, intriguingly, the present piece proves that he did not abandon this practice even after obtaining his maîtrise. It is stamped by the ébéniste and marchand Denis Genty, who became master in 1754, which provides a terminus ante quem for its execution.
Dubois' earliest marquetry furniture of the 1740s is generally decorated with delicate foliate motifs in bois-de-boût, similar to that of his contemporaries Jean-Pierre Latz and Bernard I Van Risenburgh. One of his most accomplished pieces executed during this period is the celebrated encoignure supplied in 1753 to Count Branicki in Warsaw, but almost certainly executed around 1744, the date which appears on the clock in its cresting, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum and illustrated in A. Pradère, Les Ebenistes Français, Paris, 1989, pp. 171-173.
Dubois developed a highly individual style, both in his marquetry and his choice of mounts but particularly certain models and shapes favoured by him which allows his work to be recognised. The present bureau, with its relatively deep frieze and slightly narrower central drawer, is of a type which Dubois executed in several variants, differing the dimensions and materials employed. Most of these are executed in bois-de-boût marquetry or decorated with precious Chinese or Japanese lacquer. They are generally richly-mounted with voluptuous scrolls, chutes and sabots, some of which appear to be exclusive to his pieces. One of the mounts apparently only employed by him is the unusual pierced scrolling mount applied to the ends of the present bureau. Designed as a rosette of swirling rococo form, this rare mount appears on a further bureau stamped by Dubois formerly in the Wendland collection (ibid., p. 175).
A QUESTION OF PROVENANCE: CHESTERFIELD OR ROTHSCHILD?
This magnificent bureau plat was sold from Highclere Castle, the seat of the Earls of Carnarvon, a mansion designed by Charles James Barry, and perhaps now equally famous as the location for Downton Abbey as it is for the expeditions that led to the discovery of Tutankhamun.
In the early 20th Century, Highclere became the repository of a superlative group of French furniture, pictures and objets d'art inherited by Almina, Countess of Carnarvon (wife of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon (d. 1923)) from the collections of Alfred de Rothschild (d. 1918) at 1 Seamore Place, London W1 and Halton, Buckinghamshire. Part of the collection was sold by Lady Carnarvon at Christie's on 19-21 May 1925 but many of the more important pieces were not included in that sale. Indeed many appear to have been sold privately some years before to Duveen, who sold a number of porcelain-mounted pieces to Henry E. Huntington (now in the Huntington Library) and Mrs A. Hamilton Rice (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Whilst it is tempting to conclude, therefore, that this bureau plat was a Rothschild purchase of the mid-19th Century, the handles may perhaps point to an alternative hypothesis.
The drawers on this bureau plat were conceived by Dubois to open by key only. The rocaille foliate handles were added when the bureau plat was in England and, intriguingly, they correspond to a circa 1765-80 Birmingham metal-worker's pattern book which is now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum (N. Goodison, 'The Victoria and Albert Museum's Collection of Metal-Work Pattern Books', FHS Journal, fig. 8). This would therefore suggest that the bureau plat was already in England in the late 18th Century - which raises the possibility of an even more illustrious Francophile provenance - Chesterfield House in London.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, the diplomat and politician, is perhaps best known to posterity for the letters he showered upon his nephew and natural son, Philip Stanhope. The Earl was a man of the most refined taste. He took a close and indeed exacting interest in every aspect of the decoration of Chesterfield House - begun in 1746 - and work on the foundations was well under way by the ensuing summer. In July 1747 he wrote to Madame de Monconseil: 'I am at present in the process of ruining myself by building a fine house... which will be finished in the French style with abundance of sculptures and gilding.' The house, in South Audley Street, was completed in 1749 to designs by Isaac Ware, a protégé of Lord Burlington and the author of The Complete Body of Architecture, 1756. Ware devoted a whole section in his book to the house entitled 'The construction of a town-house of the greatest elegance'.
Arguably the most exceptional room on the ground floor of Chesterfield House was the Ante Room, which at least by 1815 was known as the French Room. This name was due not to the five overdoors supplied by Joli, a pair of views of Rome and three views of Venice, but to the character of the boiseries into which these were intended to fit, which were indeed of French design, deriving, as Professor T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer noted, from a design by Nicolas Pineau published in 1727 (S. Medlam, letter, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXI, March 1989, p. 223). After the demolition of Chesterfield House the boiseries were adapted for installation in an octagonal room at Whitburn Hall: since 1971 these have been in the Bowes Museum. It would seem entirely appropriate that the house that the 4th Earl described as hôtel Chesterfield should be furnished with superlative Rococo menuiserie and ébénisterie in the latest Parisian fashion.
Conceived in the full-blown Louis XV style, this elegant bureau is a superb example of Jacques Dubois' marquetry furniture executed just after 1750. It is embellished with foliate marquetry in bois-de-boût to the drawer-fronts and sides and is further enriched with ormolu mouldings framing the sinuous outline and with bold chutes and sabots cast with foliage.
Jacques Dubois probably settled in Paris in the 1720s, initially working in the workshop of his half-brother Noel Gérard, only to become a master in 1742 at the age of forty-eight. He almost certainly sold his pieces through Gérard but it is unclear how he continued to do so after the latter's death in 1736 and before he became a master. Again, he must have turned to other marchands and, intriguingly, the present piece proves that he did not abandon this practice even after obtaining his maîtrise. It is stamped by the ébéniste and marchand Denis Genty, who became master in 1754, which provides a terminus ante quem for its execution.
Dubois' earliest marquetry furniture of the 1740s is generally decorated with delicate foliate motifs in bois-de-boût, similar to that of his contemporaries Jean-Pierre Latz and Bernard I Van Risenburgh. One of his most accomplished pieces executed during this period is the celebrated encoignure supplied in 1753 to Count Branicki in Warsaw, but almost certainly executed around 1744, the date which appears on the clock in its cresting, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum and illustrated in A. Pradère, Les Ebenistes Français, Paris, 1989, pp. 171-173.
Dubois developed a highly individual style, both in his marquetry and his choice of mounts but particularly certain models and shapes favoured by him which allows his work to be recognised. The present bureau, with its relatively deep frieze and slightly narrower central drawer, is of a type which Dubois executed in several variants, differing the dimensions and materials employed. Most of these are executed in bois-de-boût marquetry or decorated with precious Chinese or Japanese lacquer. They are generally richly-mounted with voluptuous scrolls, chutes and sabots, some of which appear to be exclusive to his pieces. One of the mounts apparently only employed by him is the unusual pierced scrolling mount applied to the ends of the present bureau. Designed as a rosette of swirling rococo form, this rare mount appears on a further bureau stamped by Dubois formerly in the Wendland collection (ibid., p. 175).
A QUESTION OF PROVENANCE: CHESTERFIELD OR ROTHSCHILD?
This magnificent bureau plat was sold from Highclere Castle, the seat of the Earls of Carnarvon, a mansion designed by Charles James Barry, and perhaps now equally famous as the location for Downton Abbey as it is for the expeditions that led to the discovery of Tutankhamun.
In the early 20th Century, Highclere became the repository of a superlative group of French furniture, pictures and objets d'art inherited by Almina, Countess of Carnarvon (wife of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon (d. 1923)) from the collections of Alfred de Rothschild (d. 1918) at 1 Seamore Place, London W1 and Halton, Buckinghamshire. Part of the collection was sold by Lady Carnarvon at Christie's on 19-21 May 1925 but many of the more important pieces were not included in that sale. Indeed many appear to have been sold privately some years before to Duveen, who sold a number of porcelain-mounted pieces to Henry E. Huntington (now in the Huntington Library) and Mrs A. Hamilton Rice (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Whilst it is tempting to conclude, therefore, that this bureau plat was a Rothschild purchase of the mid-19th Century, the handles may perhaps point to an alternative hypothesis.
The drawers on this bureau plat were conceived by Dubois to open by key only. The rocaille foliate handles were added when the bureau plat was in England and, intriguingly, they correspond to a circa 1765-80 Birmingham metal-worker's pattern book which is now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum (N. Goodison, 'The Victoria and Albert Museum's Collection of Metal-Work Pattern Books', FHS Journal, fig. 8). This would therefore suggest that the bureau plat was already in England in the late 18th Century - which raises the possibility of an even more illustrious Francophile provenance - Chesterfield House in London.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, the diplomat and politician, is perhaps best known to posterity for the letters he showered upon his nephew and natural son, Philip Stanhope. The Earl was a man of the most refined taste. He took a close and indeed exacting interest in every aspect of the decoration of Chesterfield House - begun in 1746 - and work on the foundations was well under way by the ensuing summer. In July 1747 he wrote to Madame de Monconseil: 'I am at present in the process of ruining myself by building a fine house... which will be finished in the French style with abundance of sculptures and gilding.' The house, in South Audley Street, was completed in 1749 to designs by Isaac Ware, a protégé of Lord Burlington and the author of The Complete Body of Architecture, 1756. Ware devoted a whole section in his book to the house entitled 'The construction of a town-house of the greatest elegance'.
Arguably the most exceptional room on the ground floor of Chesterfield House was the Ante Room, which at least by 1815 was known as the French Room. This name was due not to the five overdoors supplied by Joli, a pair of views of Rome and three views of Venice, but to the character of the boiseries into which these were intended to fit, which were indeed of French design, deriving, as Professor T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer noted, from a design by Nicolas Pineau published in 1727 (S. Medlam, letter, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXI, March 1989, p. 223). After the demolition of Chesterfield House the boiseries were adapted for installation in an octagonal room at Whitburn Hall: since 1971 these have been in the Bowes Museum. It would seem entirely appropriate that the house that the 4th Earl described as hôtel Chesterfield should be furnished with superlative Rococo menuiserie and ébénisterie in the latest Parisian fashion.