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Lot Essay
Boulle Fils, last recorded active in 1754.
This desk is one of a sizeable body of bureaux plats that can with confidence be attributed to Andé-Charles Boulle and his workshop. Among the well-known series of drawings of furniture attributed to Boulle at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris there are two designs of writing tables, both of which clearly relate to the present model, combining elements from the two (A. Pradére, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV á la Révolution, Paris, 1989, Fig. 36). The curved legs headed by satyr's masks and the central mount of a grinning mask occur on one drawing, whereas the other shows the forceful mounts of scrolled acanthus leaves that separate the drawers on the present desk. On this second drawing, the legs rest on lion's paws and are headed by female heads. Nearly identical legs are found on a third drawing of a comparable writing-table in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York (T. Dell, The Frick Collection, An Illustrated Catalogue, vol. V, Furniture, Italian and French, New York, p. 209, fig. 2). This is signed by one of the foremost designers of the Régence period, Gilles-Marie Oppenordt (1672-1742) who is known to have collaborated with Boulle and to whom the drawings at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs are also sometimes attributed. In 1720, a fire destroyed part of Boulle's workshop, after which an inventory was made up of its contents that in large part had perished. It is headed by the furniture belonging to the Duc de Bourbon that was saved; the first item is a bureau of six feet long. Among the destroyed furniture there were another five bureaux, decorated with marquetry of brass and tortoiseshell and between five and six feet long, as well as two examples veneered with wood 'de couleur' and a further twelve bureaux of six feet in various states of completion (Read, Richard, Lacordaire and Montaiglon, 'Pierre et Charles-André Boulle ébénistes de Louis XIII et Louis XIV', Archives de l'Art Français 4 (1855-'56), p. 336). Clearly, bureaux plats were produced in considerable quantities in Boulle's atelier. The mounts on this desk all form part of Boulle's répertoire and several may be recognized on the furniture designs by him that were published by Jean Mariette in a series of eight engravings (J.-P. Samoyault, André-Charles Boulle et sa famille, Genéve 1979, figs. 6-13). The grinning masks on the central drawer fronts probably represent the weeping philosopher, Heraclitus (see for instance P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, no. 158, F427). Models for masques d'Héraclite et de Démocrite were listed in the inventory of Boulle's possessions made up after his death in 1732 (Samoyault, op. cit., p. 138, no. 21).
RELATED EXAMPLES
Among the bureaux plats attributed to Boulle, several types may be recognized, distinguished by their shape and outline and by the mounts employed. The Fonthill writing table, with its legs headed by satyr's masks, is of a more robust design that the earliest and most refined bureaux by Boulle of circa 1710-20. It does however, belong to a group that was probably executed in Boulle's atelier, possibly by Boulle fils, from the 1720s until the mid-eighteenth century. It is closely related to a premiére partie bureau of closely related form but with a number of different mounts is in the Wallace Collection (Hughes, op. cit.); another in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (G. Wilson and C. Hess, Summary Catalogue of European Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2001, no. 57); another, in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (H. Roberts, For the King's pleasure, The Furnishing and Decoration of George IV's Apartments at Windsor Castle, London, 2001, p. 145, fig. 168); another illustrated in H. Szabolcsi, French Furniture in Hungary, Budapest, 1964, fig.1; and another in the Frick Collection in New York (Dell, op. cit., pp. 204-214). Remarkably, a very similar 'pair' remain in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, one en première partie and the other in contre-partie (J. Lees-Milne and J. Cornforth, 'Chatsworth', Country Life 164 (1968), pt. II (18 April), fig. 10, although these are distinguished by the tall sabots of the early model more usually associated with a well-known type of console shown in one of Mariette's engravings, where they are again combined with satyr's masks (P. Hughes, op. cit., nos. 160 and 161). All the other bureaux have sabots of a scrolled, openwork model that is more Régence in feeling.
BOULLE BUREAUX PLATS IN ENGLISH REGENCY COLLECTIONS
Following the lead of the Prince Regent, later King George IV, a large number of English noblemen from his circle shared a taste for 'Buhl' furniture and many Boulle pieces can be traced to their collections: of these, bureaux were undoubtedly among the most highly prized items. George IV himself had his Boulle bureau plat moved from the Library at Carlton House to his private Sitting Room at Windsor Castle in 1828 (Roberts, op. cit., p. 139, account no. 242). Whilst the table now at the Wallace Collection may have belonged to the King's brother, the Duke of York, whose collection was sold at Christie's in 1827. When King George IV had his bureau plat moved to Windsor Castle in 1828, his cabinet-makers and upholsterers Morel and Seddon charged him 'To taking off the ormoulu enrichments of a large Buhl writing table, repairing rechasing and regilding the whole of do adding sundry new parts to match, new brass rails and moulding on the edge, repairing, cleaning and polishing the Buhl work adding new locks and an ornamental key'. The Fonthill desk was also given a new lock at about the same time, and the mounts obviously underwent some similar treatment.
ALFRED MORRISON, VICTORIAN MAECENAS
Alfred Morrison (1821-1897) was the second son of the millionaire textile merchant James Morrison, probably the richest commoner in the nineteenth century. As a young man, James (b. 1789) had left his small Hampshire village where his father had been innkeeper, to seek his fortune in London. Alfred, however, grew up in considerable luxury, enjoying the comforts of a townhouse in Harley Street and country estates at Fonthill in Wiltshire and Basildon in Berkshire. He attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, travelled regularly on the continent and spent over three years in North America on behalf of his father's merchant bank. While travelling with him in 1842, his elder brother Charles wrote home: 'I have been observing Alfred - & do not think he will become a working man of business... I think that nothing but necessity will induce him to become the inmate of a countinghouse... [he] does not value money & does like his ease.' Fortunately for Alfred, he would never be forced to become the 'inmate of a countinghouse'. When his father died in 1857, Alfred inherited the Fonthill estate and £750,000 in stocks and shares. His country home was called the Pavillon; it was the surviving wing of William Beckford's Fonthill Splendens (the ruins of the famous Abbey were close by). Like Beckford, Alfred would use his inheritance to amass an extraordinary collection of art treasures. He began by collecting engravings and Chinese art, the latter often acquired from Henry Durlacher. However, a significant proportion of the Chinese ceramics and enamel on metal were purchased in 1861 from Lord Loch of Drylaw (1827-1900). Alfred commissioned the internationally famous architect Owen Jones to design a room at Fonthill especially for the Chinese objects 'in the Cinque-cento style....the chimney-piece and fittings [made by Jackson and Graham] are entirely of ebony, inlaid with ivory, and the ceiling is of wood panelled and inlaid, the mouldings being black and gold' (The Builder, 9 May 1874, p.385). While work was proceeding in Wiltshire, Alfred acquired the lease, in 1865, to 16 Carlton House Terrace; Jones, Jackson and Graham proceeded to create for him a palace of art behind the dull stucco exterior.
'Pass through this heavy doorway, and in an instant every fair clime surrounds you, every region lavishes its sentiment; you are the heir of all the ages... There is no sham in this house - no wood pretending to be metal, and no iron affecting to be marble... We may ascend the magnificent stairway, past the globes of light upheld by bronze candelabra rising seven feet from the floor, and as we go from story to story find good, painstaking work meeting us everywhere.' The house was a riot of color, pattern and texture; inlaid woodwork; coffered geometrical ceilings; walls hung with rich Lyons silks. 'It makes the chief palaces of Northern Europe vulgar' (Moncure Conway, Travels in South Kensington, London, 1882, pp.154-159). Alfred filled his homes with paintings and sculpture, Persian carpets, tapestries, lace and embroidery, coins and medals, Greek antiquities, autographs and letters Boulle furniture and Old Master Pictures, as well as Chinese porcelain, adding three top-lit galleries to Fonthill in the 1880s. He bought work by contemporary artists including Frederic Leighton and John Brett, but he also 'loved to be the Maecenas' of contemporary craftsmen, commissioning exquisite and priceless pieces from the Spanish metalworker Placido Zuloaga, the French enamellists Charles Lepec and Fernand Thesmar, and the goldsmith Lucien Falize. Perhaps Alfred was inspired by William Beckford. Morrison clearly had a predilection for Boulle furniture and indeed owned what appears to be a commode of the Grand Trianon model, which is visible in the early twentieth century photograph of the Gallery.
This desk is one of a sizeable body of bureaux plats that can with confidence be attributed to Andé-Charles Boulle and his workshop. Among the well-known series of drawings of furniture attributed to Boulle at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris there are two designs of writing tables, both of which clearly relate to the present model, combining elements from the two (A. Pradére, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV á la Révolution, Paris, 1989, Fig. 36). The curved legs headed by satyr's masks and the central mount of a grinning mask occur on one drawing, whereas the other shows the forceful mounts of scrolled acanthus leaves that separate the drawers on the present desk. On this second drawing, the legs rest on lion's paws and are headed by female heads. Nearly identical legs are found on a third drawing of a comparable writing-table in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York (T. Dell, The Frick Collection, An Illustrated Catalogue, vol. V, Furniture, Italian and French, New York, p. 209, fig. 2). This is signed by one of the foremost designers of the Régence period, Gilles-Marie Oppenordt (1672-1742) who is known to have collaborated with Boulle and to whom the drawings at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs are also sometimes attributed. In 1720, a fire destroyed part of Boulle's workshop, after which an inventory was made up of its contents that in large part had perished. It is headed by the furniture belonging to the Duc de Bourbon that was saved; the first item is a bureau of six feet long. Among the destroyed furniture there were another five bureaux, decorated with marquetry of brass and tortoiseshell and between five and six feet long, as well as two examples veneered with wood 'de couleur' and a further twelve bureaux of six feet in various states of completion (Read, Richard, Lacordaire and Montaiglon, 'Pierre et Charles-André Boulle ébénistes de Louis XIII et Louis XIV', Archives de l'Art Français 4 (1855-'56), p. 336). Clearly, bureaux plats were produced in considerable quantities in Boulle's atelier. The mounts on this desk all form part of Boulle's répertoire and several may be recognized on the furniture designs by him that were published by Jean Mariette in a series of eight engravings (J.-P. Samoyault, André-Charles Boulle et sa famille, Genéve 1979, figs. 6-13). The grinning masks on the central drawer fronts probably represent the weeping philosopher, Heraclitus (see for instance P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, no. 158, F427). Models for masques d'Héraclite et de Démocrite were listed in the inventory of Boulle's possessions made up after his death in 1732 (Samoyault, op. cit., p. 138, no. 21).
RELATED EXAMPLES
Among the bureaux plats attributed to Boulle, several types may be recognized, distinguished by their shape and outline and by the mounts employed. The Fonthill writing table, with its legs headed by satyr's masks, is of a more robust design that the earliest and most refined bureaux by Boulle of circa 1710-20. It does however, belong to a group that was probably executed in Boulle's atelier, possibly by Boulle fils, from the 1720s until the mid-eighteenth century. It is closely related to a premiére partie bureau of closely related form but with a number of different mounts is in the Wallace Collection (Hughes, op. cit.); another in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (G. Wilson and C. Hess, Summary Catalogue of European Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2001, no. 57); another, in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (H. Roberts, For the King's pleasure, The Furnishing and Decoration of George IV's Apartments at Windsor Castle, London, 2001, p. 145, fig. 168); another illustrated in H. Szabolcsi, French Furniture in Hungary, Budapest, 1964, fig.1; and another in the Frick Collection in New York (Dell, op. cit., pp. 204-214). Remarkably, a very similar 'pair' remain in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, one en première partie and the other in contre-partie (J. Lees-Milne and J. Cornforth, 'Chatsworth', Country Life 164 (1968), pt. II (18 April), fig. 10, although these are distinguished by the tall sabots of the early model more usually associated with a well-known type of console shown in one of Mariette's engravings, where they are again combined with satyr's masks (P. Hughes, op. cit., nos. 160 and 161). All the other bureaux have sabots of a scrolled, openwork model that is more Régence in feeling.
BOULLE BUREAUX PLATS IN ENGLISH REGENCY COLLECTIONS
Following the lead of the Prince Regent, later King George IV, a large number of English noblemen from his circle shared a taste for 'Buhl' furniture and many Boulle pieces can be traced to their collections: of these, bureaux were undoubtedly among the most highly prized items. George IV himself had his Boulle bureau plat moved from the Library at Carlton House to his private Sitting Room at Windsor Castle in 1828 (Roberts, op. cit., p. 139, account no. 242). Whilst the table now at the Wallace Collection may have belonged to the King's brother, the Duke of York, whose collection was sold at Christie's in 1827. When King George IV had his bureau plat moved to Windsor Castle in 1828, his cabinet-makers and upholsterers Morel and Seddon charged him 'To taking off the ormoulu enrichments of a large Buhl writing table, repairing rechasing and regilding the whole of do adding sundry new parts to match, new brass rails and moulding on the edge, repairing, cleaning and polishing the Buhl work adding new locks and an ornamental key'. The Fonthill desk was also given a new lock at about the same time, and the mounts obviously underwent some similar treatment.
ALFRED MORRISON, VICTORIAN MAECENAS
Alfred Morrison (1821-1897) was the second son of the millionaire textile merchant James Morrison, probably the richest commoner in the nineteenth century. As a young man, James (b. 1789) had left his small Hampshire village where his father had been innkeeper, to seek his fortune in London. Alfred, however, grew up in considerable luxury, enjoying the comforts of a townhouse in Harley Street and country estates at Fonthill in Wiltshire and Basildon in Berkshire. He attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, travelled regularly on the continent and spent over three years in North America on behalf of his father's merchant bank. While travelling with him in 1842, his elder brother Charles wrote home: 'I have been observing Alfred - & do not think he will become a working man of business... I think that nothing but necessity will induce him to become the inmate of a countinghouse... [he] does not value money & does like his ease.' Fortunately for Alfred, he would never be forced to become the 'inmate of a countinghouse'. When his father died in 1857, Alfred inherited the Fonthill estate and £750,000 in stocks and shares. His country home was called the Pavillon; it was the surviving wing of William Beckford's Fonthill Splendens (the ruins of the famous Abbey were close by). Like Beckford, Alfred would use his inheritance to amass an extraordinary collection of art treasures. He began by collecting engravings and Chinese art, the latter often acquired from Henry Durlacher. However, a significant proportion of the Chinese ceramics and enamel on metal were purchased in 1861 from Lord Loch of Drylaw (1827-1900). Alfred commissioned the internationally famous architect Owen Jones to design a room at Fonthill especially for the Chinese objects 'in the Cinque-cento style....the chimney-piece and fittings [made by Jackson and Graham] are entirely of ebony, inlaid with ivory, and the ceiling is of wood panelled and inlaid, the mouldings being black and gold' (The Builder, 9 May 1874, p.385). While work was proceeding in Wiltshire, Alfred acquired the lease, in 1865, to 16 Carlton House Terrace; Jones, Jackson and Graham proceeded to create for him a palace of art behind the dull stucco exterior.
'Pass through this heavy doorway, and in an instant every fair clime surrounds you, every region lavishes its sentiment; you are the heir of all the ages... There is no sham in this house - no wood pretending to be metal, and no iron affecting to be marble... We may ascend the magnificent stairway, past the globes of light upheld by bronze candelabra rising seven feet from the floor, and as we go from story to story find good, painstaking work meeting us everywhere.' The house was a riot of color, pattern and texture; inlaid woodwork; coffered geometrical ceilings; walls hung with rich Lyons silks. 'It makes the chief palaces of Northern Europe vulgar' (Moncure Conway, Travels in South Kensington, London, 1882, pp.154-159). Alfred filled his homes with paintings and sculpture, Persian carpets, tapestries, lace and embroidery, coins and medals, Greek antiquities, autographs and letters Boulle furniture and Old Master Pictures, as well as Chinese porcelain, adding three top-lit galleries to Fonthill in the 1880s. He bought work by contemporary artists including Frederic Leighton and John Brett, but he also 'loved to be the Maecenas' of contemporary craftsmen, commissioning exquisite and priceless pieces from the Spanish metalworker Placido Zuloaga, the French enamellists Charles Lepec and Fernand Thesmar, and the goldsmith Lucien Falize. Perhaps Alfred was inspired by William Beckford. Morrison clearly had a predilection for Boulle furniture and indeed owned what appears to be a commode of the Grand Trianon model, which is visible in the early twentieth century photograph of the Gallery.