CIRCA 1725-30, PREVIOUSLY ALTERED INTO TWO PARTS

Of a generous and unusual form and with a marble top delicately carved with Bérain-esque motifs, this centre table is a rare and fascinating interpretation of the prevailing Régence style of the time. The grotesque masks, rosettes, stretcher and top carved with arabesque motifs refer to the ornamental grammar of the late baroque period popularised by masters like André-Charles Boulle, while the delicate form, legs and scrolling motifs point to the nascent rococo style that would soon sweep Europe.

While the decorative vocabulary of this table clearly derives from French models (including a console table preserved in the musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris [inv. no. 4838] and a centre table similarly decorated with masks, a trellis ground and a stretcher from the collection of Jean Bloch, sold Hôtel Drouot, Fraysse & Associés, Paris, 1 December 2010), the waved shaping of the frieze combined with the high-hipped legs and trellis ground of the present lot relates to tables executed in southern Germany in the second quarter of the 18th century. A number of German giltwood console tables of different decoration but of related form were sold at Sotheby's Amsterdam, 16-17 October 2001, lots 272-273 and 276, while a number of elaborately carved giltwood Régence console tables with a variety of carved masks are preserved in the Residenz in Munich.

This table was in the collection of the industrialist Gabriel Albert Watel-Dehaynin (1885-1972) in his magnificent residence the hôtel Watel-Dehaynin on the Avenue Foch in Paris. Designed in a historicist style by the architect Georges Chedanne at the end of the 19th century, the hôtel was remarkable in that its facade and interior displayed a profusion of sculptural works by contemporary French sculptors including Henri-Édouard Lombard, Raoul Verlet, François-Léon Sicard and Georges Gardet. Glowingly described in an article 'L'HOTEL DE M. DEHAYNIN' in Revue des arts décoratifs, 1 January 1901, p. 377, the hôtel was demolished in 1974.