ATTRIBUTED TO BOULLE FILS, CIRCA 1730-40

This bureau plat displays many of the essential characteristics found on bureaux plat which can be confidently attributed to André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732). It was undoubtedly made by an ébéniste with a thorough knowledge of Boulle's oeuvre and is likely to have been made in the workshop of his sons, Boulle ‘fils’. Boulle's bureaux plat can be divided into three basic groups. The first group, which is also probably the earliest, has six legs and derives from a twin design in plate III of Mariette's folio of Boulle's engravings published between 1707 and 1730, 'Nouveaux dessins... chez Mariette'. Two examples are known, one formerly in the collection of the Earls of Ashburnham and sold by M. Hubert Givenchy, Christie's Monaco, 4 December 1993, lot 68, the other sold from the collection of Randon de Boisset in 1777 and now at Vaux-le-Vicomte (A. Pradère, French Furniture Makers, London, 1989, p. 77). The second group, with projecting central drawer, probably derives from a drawing in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs attributed to Boulle (ibid, p. 83); the most accomplished example of this model is the bureau plat at Boughton House, Northamptonshire. The third and largest group, which can be further subdivided on the basis of the mounts, is distinguished by its recessed central drawer, as appears on that in the Getty Museum (ibid, p. 78) and one in the Wallace Collection (F.J.B. Watson, The Wallace Collection Catalogues: Furniture, London, 1956, no. F427).

The present bureau plat represents a transitional stage in the development of the form, just before its transformation into the Régence bureau plat as represented by Boulle's third group discussed above. It retains from the first group the drawers of almost equal length and the flower-filled latticework of the mounts flanking the central drawer; in addition, the profile of the two flanking drawers retains a longer and less pronounced sweep. The overall shape is closest to that of the third group with its narrower frieze and recessed central drawer. The distinctive mounts and legs appear on both the second and third groups. The mounts depicting Apollo and Democritus, the satyr-mask angle-mounts and the sabots are standard Boulle mounts and occur frequently on his work. These particular mounts, which lack the fine and naturalistic chasing of Boulle père, suggest a date of creation for this desk of sometime after the fire which destroyed the whole of his atelier in 1720, when the workshop was very much being operated by his sons.

At least four other bureaux plat are known to combine masks of either Democritus or Heraclitus with those of Apollo or Daphne together with a satyr as opposed to female angle mounts. Of these, one was in the collection of Jacques Doucet, sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 7-8 June 1912, lot 317; and a further example, formerly in the collection of Sir Phillip Sassoon, Bt., also veneered in amaranth and mahogany, was sold by the Marquess of Cholmondeley, Christie’s, London, Works of Art from Houghton, 8 December 1994, lot 31.