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Lot Essay
These beautifully carved chaises follow the model of one of the last great suites of mobilier ordered by the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne for the use of the King, for his Games Room or Salon des Jeux in the château de Compiègne. The suite was ordered on 17 March 1790, well after the outset of the revolution, at a time when the Government was planning to move outside the tumult of Paris, with the Assembly to be installed in Soissons and the Royal family at Compiègne.
The suite originally consisted of thirty chaises (10 à carreaux’, 20 ‘garnies en plein’), six fauteuils, two bergères, two tabourets and four voyeuses à genoux. Of the surviving examples twenty four of the chaises and all of the fauteuils and bergères are in Versailles (where it is divided between the King’s library, the King’s Cabinet and his bedroom at the Petit Trianon), while one chaise is in the Louvre, which bears the label inscribed ‘pour le service du Roy à Compiègne /no.1’.
The suite is unusually well recorded in the archives of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne.
The first order of 17 March is fascinating as it details not only the placement of the suite within the Salon des Jeux (the fauteuils and bergères were to be placed either side of the fireplace, with the chaises presumably placed throughout the room as needed) but also the specific upholstery with which the suite would be covered, a Chinese silk already held in storage ‘de Pekin à grands arbres et terrasses' which would create ‘un tres agréable effet’:
Service de Compiègne. Le 17 Mars 1790. No. 1- Devis de dépense pour l’appartement du Roi au Chateau de Compiègne.
Sallon du jeu du Roy.
Pièce à meuble neuf, les meubles qui y servoient cy devant étant employé suivant le devis apartment de Madame et Cabinet de Monsieur.
Le billard qui est dans ce salon peut être placé dans la pièces des buffets ou ils devoient être, il n’a posé icy que pour les petits voyages.
Le meuble faire doit être de trois pièces de tapisserie…6 parties de rideaux…6 parties de portières. La pièces étant tres grande, on propose de mettre un rang de fauteuils et bergères aux deux côtés de la cheminée, le reste seroit tout chaises.
Savoir:
2 bergères à carreaux et 2 tabourets de pieds
6 fauteuils meublans id.,
10 chaises à carreaux,
20 chaises garnies en plein,
4 voyeuses à genouil
1 paravent à bois couvert
2 écrans en ébénisterie, le Roi s’en servant partout
It seems that the fire screens described at the end of the order were not in the end supplied, as they are not mentioned in the individual craftsmen’s bills for the suite, which are also remarkably detailed.
On 1 May the menuisier Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené charged 18 livres for creating the frames for the two bergères, 54 livres for the six fauteuils, 210 livres for the thirty chaises, 8 livres for the two tabourets à pieds and 28 livres for the four voyeuses à genouil for a total of 318 livres.
On the same date the carver Alexandre Regnier charged a total of 810 livres for the carving of the thirty chaises, which he describes in minute detail:
Pour le Salon du Jeu du Roy. –Fait la sculpture de trente chaises, les dossiers sont orné de deux ornements, scavoir des perles enfillez et des parties longue cordé et sur les faces des antrelas a fleures de linas (sic) et bande creuse, meme entrelas et feullles d’eaux aux assemblages, les pieds sont orné de perles enfillez et muguet dans les canelure envelopé par en haut par des feuilles de lorier et un tors d’olive et une rosace en soleil sur l’angle qu’il a fallit arondire…
The gilder Chaise (aptly named!) charged the considerable sum of 2088 livres for gilding twenty nine of the chaises at a cost of 72 livres for each chaise and an additional 72 livres each for the four voyeuses, 132 livres for each of the bergères, 96 livres for each of the fauteuils and 36 livres for each of the tabourets.
Chaise only gilded 29 of the chaises, while the more celebrated doreur Chatard gilded just one chaise for which he charged 88 livres, which was evidently deemed too expensive.
The incredible specialization of the French guild system is revealed through the fact that two separate craftsmen were paid for the supply of horsehair, webbing and nails for the upholstery, Le Dreux and Santerre, while the Chinese silk was found to be too narrow for the suite, so additional borders needed to be painted, for which the peintre en etoffe Vincent charged 600 livres, with an additional 24 livres for touching up the background of the silk for the ten chaises ‘à carreaux’.
The thirty chaises were delivered between 13 October and 6 December 1790, but although the whole suite was subsequently installed at Compiègne, it was sadly never used by the King, who, apart from the one ill-fated attempt to escape, never left Paris again. The last record of the suite, before it was presumably dispersed in the Revolutionary sales, is in an inventory of Compiègne drawn up in November 1791, where the Chinese silk upholstery was still regarded as its most significant attribute as the description begins ‘Un meuble de Pekin fond blanc, dessin à arbres, fleurs, fruits oiseaux des Indes et terrasse…’
THE VOYEUSES FROM THE SUITE?
The chaises offered here duplicate the exquisitely refined carving of the surviving examples of the suite, but with a couple of variations: the height of our chaises is lower than the surviving chaises in Versailles and the Louvre (87 cm as opposed to 90 or 91 cm), the profile of the backs is more square, the back legs are at a pronounced angle (much more so than the chaises at Versailles), and the top of the back legs on the sides feature a rosette in a square panel rather than a mille raies ornament in a rectangular panel, as is the case on the Louvre and Versailles examples.
It seems clear that the suite was not added to with further, possibly variant examples after its first delivery, as it was effectively never used and the same number of chairs was listed in the 1791 inventory, leaving us with two possible explanations for these differences. Were these chaises created for another, as yet undocumented order, or are they in fact two from the four 'voyeuses à genouil' listed in the delivery, of which no surviving examples are known? This theory could be supported by the fact that the legs on our chaises are unusually short, and distinctively angled back legs are a feature of voyeuses which were designed to be kneeled on with one's arms resting on the crest-rail, and this gives the back legs greater stability. The possibility that they were also orginally conceived with an upholstered crest-rail (the normal design for a voyeuse particularly the type described as 'a genouil') could be supported by the absence of pegs where the uprights meet the crest-rail, a joint which would normally be pegged in the 18th century. It is also fascinating to note that in the suite of mobilier supplied by Jacob to the Salon des Jeux of the château de Saint-Cloud in 1787-1788, the chaises (which were of virtually the same design as those in the Compiègne suite) had mille raies rectangular panels at the top of the back legs, whereas the voyeuses had rosettes in a square panel, indicating how variations could occur within the same suite depending on the specific function of the individual type of chair, thus strengthening the possibility that the chaises offered here could indeed have been two of the missing voyeuses from the Compiègne suite (see P. Verlet, Le Mobilier Royal Français, Paris, 1994, vol. III. p. 243 for the Saint-Cloud voyeuses).
The suite originally consisted of thirty chaises (10 à carreaux’, 20 ‘garnies en plein’), six fauteuils, two bergères, two tabourets and four voyeuses à genoux. Of the surviving examples twenty four of the chaises and all of the fauteuils and bergères are in Versailles (where it is divided between the King’s library, the King’s Cabinet and his bedroom at the Petit Trianon), while one chaise is in the Louvre, which bears the label inscribed ‘pour le service du Roy à Compiègne /no.1’.
The suite is unusually well recorded in the archives of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne.
The first order of 17 March is fascinating as it details not only the placement of the suite within the Salon des Jeux (the fauteuils and bergères were to be placed either side of the fireplace, with the chaises presumably placed throughout the room as needed) but also the specific upholstery with which the suite would be covered, a Chinese silk already held in storage ‘de Pekin à grands arbres et terrasses' which would create ‘un tres agréable effet’:
Service de Compiègne. Le 17 Mars 1790. No. 1- Devis de dépense pour l’appartement du Roi au Chateau de Compiègne.
Sallon du jeu du Roy.
Pièce à meuble neuf, les meubles qui y servoient cy devant étant employé suivant le devis apartment de Madame et Cabinet de Monsieur.
Le billard qui est dans ce salon peut être placé dans la pièces des buffets ou ils devoient être, il n’a posé icy que pour les petits voyages.
Le meuble faire doit être de trois pièces de tapisserie…6 parties de rideaux…6 parties de portières. La pièces étant tres grande, on propose de mettre un rang de fauteuils et bergères aux deux côtés de la cheminée, le reste seroit tout chaises.
Savoir:
2 bergères à carreaux et 2 tabourets de pieds
6 fauteuils meublans id.,
10 chaises à carreaux,
20 chaises garnies en plein,
4 voyeuses à genouil
1 paravent à bois couvert
2 écrans en ébénisterie, le Roi s’en servant partout
It seems that the fire screens described at the end of the order were not in the end supplied, as they are not mentioned in the individual craftsmen’s bills for the suite, which are also remarkably detailed.
On 1 May the menuisier Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené charged 18 livres for creating the frames for the two bergères, 54 livres for the six fauteuils, 210 livres for the thirty chaises, 8 livres for the two tabourets à pieds and 28 livres for the four voyeuses à genouil for a total of 318 livres.
On the same date the carver Alexandre Regnier charged a total of 810 livres for the carving of the thirty chaises, which he describes in minute detail:
Pour le Salon du Jeu du Roy. –Fait la sculpture de trente chaises, les dossiers sont orné de deux ornements, scavoir des perles enfillez et des parties longue cordé et sur les faces des antrelas a fleures de linas (sic) et bande creuse, meme entrelas et feullles d’eaux aux assemblages, les pieds sont orné de perles enfillez et muguet dans les canelure envelopé par en haut par des feuilles de lorier et un tors d’olive et une rosace en soleil sur l’angle qu’il a fallit arondire…
The gilder Chaise (aptly named!) charged the considerable sum of 2088 livres for gilding twenty nine of the chaises at a cost of 72 livres for each chaise and an additional 72 livres each for the four voyeuses, 132 livres for each of the bergères, 96 livres for each of the fauteuils and 36 livres for each of the tabourets.
Chaise only gilded 29 of the chaises, while the more celebrated doreur Chatard gilded just one chaise for which he charged 88 livres, which was evidently deemed too expensive.
The incredible specialization of the French guild system is revealed through the fact that two separate craftsmen were paid for the supply of horsehair, webbing and nails for the upholstery, Le Dreux and Santerre, while the Chinese silk was found to be too narrow for the suite, so additional borders needed to be painted, for which the peintre en etoffe Vincent charged 600 livres, with an additional 24 livres for touching up the background of the silk for the ten chaises ‘à carreaux’.
The thirty chaises were delivered between 13 October and 6 December 1790, but although the whole suite was subsequently installed at Compiègne, it was sadly never used by the King, who, apart from the one ill-fated attempt to escape, never left Paris again. The last record of the suite, before it was presumably dispersed in the Revolutionary sales, is in an inventory of Compiègne drawn up in November 1791, where the Chinese silk upholstery was still regarded as its most significant attribute as the description begins ‘Un meuble de Pekin fond blanc, dessin à arbres, fleurs, fruits oiseaux des Indes et terrasse…’
THE VOYEUSES FROM THE SUITE?
The chaises offered here duplicate the exquisitely refined carving of the surviving examples of the suite, but with a couple of variations: the height of our chaises is lower than the surviving chaises in Versailles and the Louvre (87 cm as opposed to 90 or 91 cm), the profile of the backs is more square, the back legs are at a pronounced angle (much more so than the chaises at Versailles), and the top of the back legs on the sides feature a rosette in a square panel rather than a mille raies ornament in a rectangular panel, as is the case on the Louvre and Versailles examples.
It seems clear that the suite was not added to with further, possibly variant examples after its first delivery, as it was effectively never used and the same number of chairs was listed in the 1791 inventory, leaving us with two possible explanations for these differences. Were these chaises created for another, as yet undocumented order, or are they in fact two from the four 'voyeuses à genouil' listed in the delivery, of which no surviving examples are known? This theory could be supported by the fact that the legs on our chaises are unusually short, and distinctively angled back legs are a feature of voyeuses which were designed to be kneeled on with one's arms resting on the crest-rail, and this gives the back legs greater stability. The possibility that they were also orginally conceived with an upholstered crest-rail (the normal design for a voyeuse particularly the type described as 'a genouil') could be supported by the absence of pegs where the uprights meet the crest-rail, a joint which would normally be pegged in the 18th century. It is also fascinating to note that in the suite of mobilier supplied by Jacob to the Salon des Jeux of the château de Saint-Cloud in 1787-1788, the chaises (which were of virtually the same design as those in the Compiègne suite) had mille raies rectangular panels at the top of the back legs, whereas the voyeuses had rosettes in a square panel, indicating how variations could occur within the same suite depending on the specific function of the individual type of chair, thus strengthening the possibility that the chaises offered here could indeed have been two of the missing voyeuses from the Compiègne suite (see P. Verlet, Le Mobilier Royal Français, Paris, 1994, vol. III. p. 243 for the Saint-Cloud voyeuses).