ATTRIBUTED TO DAVID ROENTGEN, NEUWIED, CIRCA 1775

Decorated with enchanting chinoiserie scenes executed in Roentgen's trademark marquetry à la mosaïque, this splendid roll-top desk is a superb example of Roentgen's work during the remarkable ascent of his career. The elegant form serves as the perfect vehicle for the display of the fine marquetry for which Roentgen was celebrated across Europe. One of the chief glories of Roentgen's furniture of the 1760s and 1770s is his unique marquetry à la mosaïque, whereby the full design was executed as a mosaic of small pieces of wood, like an intricate jigsaw puzzle. Roentgen developed this new technique in the late 1760s, and he first mentions it in describing a bureau with chinoiserie decoration that was offered as the first prize in a lottery of the firm's furniture organized in Hamburg in 1768 (H. Huth, Roentgen Furniture, Abraham and David Roentgen: European Cabinet-Makers, London and New York, 1974, fig. 3a).

As evidenced by a slightly later bureau from circa 1771-1772, an early form of roll-top desk made for the Margrave of Baden, Roentgen by then had elaborated a highly sophisticated repertory of chinoiserie scenes that he was to employ over and over again (G. Himmelheber, 'Roentgen-Möbel für Baden', Ausgewählte Werke aus den Sammlungen der Markgrafen und Grossherzöge von Baden, Patrimonia/Kulturstiftung der Länder 116, Karlsruhe, 1996, pp. 95-113, figs. 1-8). These motifs appear mainly to derive from engravings by the French artist Jean Pillement (1728-1803), and the Augsburg engraver Martin Engelbrecht (1684-1756). Roentgen’s marquetry was jigsaw-like not only in technique but also in composition, as he assembled larger scenes from reusable figures and individual elements.

The figural marquetry on the rolltop of this desk is typical of Roentgen’s oeuvre and appears on other works by the master cabinetmaker. For example, a more neoclassical Zylinderschreibtisch sold Christie’s, London, 4 July 2013, lot 24 (£625,875) features the same groups in identical arrangement. This specific composition occurs on a number of desks of similar form and raised on cabriole legs; one delivered to the Elector of Bavaria and another to the Elector of Saxony (Fabian, 1996, nos. 217, 219 and 221; B. Langer and A. Herzog von Württemberg, Die Möbel der Residenz München, vol.II, Die deutschen Möbel des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Munich-New York 1996, no. 67). A Klappschreibtisch by Roentgen of very similar outline and basically identical inlay to its upper section and its drawers is illustrated J. M. Greber, Abraham und David Roentgen: Möbel für Europa, vol. II, Starnberg, 1980, p. 183, fig. 365. Roentgen also employed the variations of these scenes; the central figure of the lady with a parasol, for example, appears on the tops of tables, such as an example at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (BK-166768), and a desk in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (41.82).

The figures depicted on the abovementioned works and our desk were designed by Januarius Zick (1730-1797) and were inspired by the works of the Augsburg engraver Martin Engelbrecht (1684-1756) and the French artist Jean Pillement (1728-1803). Here, the female figure holding a large vessel derives from an engraving by Pillement, now in the collection of the Kunstmuseum, Basel. The delicate and lifelike floral marquetry decorating the sides and front of this desk is also a hallmark of the Roentgen atelier, originating in French prints after seventeenth-century still lives by artists such as Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. The distinct ribbon-suspended flower arrangement on this desk was much used by Roentgen and a composition featuring similar flowers, ribbons, and an identical gardening knife can be found on an oval table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (58.75.39). Two cylinder desks of identical form featuring the combination of floral inlay to their sides and identical figural marquetry to their roll-tops are in the Residenz, Munich, where the sides are inlayed with the same gardening knife with flowers hung from ribbons, and in Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, where the sides are further decorated with birds (Greber, op. cit., p. 192, figs. 181-182 and p. 207. fig. 411, respectively).

With its back left without veneer, this desk was intended to be placed against A wall, unlikely Roentgen’s later, more neoclassical, Zylinderschreibtische. Without a superstructure fitted with frieze drawers or any ormolu mounts, this lot can be considered an early version of Roentgen’s later, more well-known cylinder bureaux. With the absence of ormolu mounts, the focus here is solely on the rich and sophisticated marquetry and the natural beauty of the base veneer. In lieu of an ormolu gallery, this desk was probably originally fitted with a wooden fretwork. Roentgen is known to have used such galleries on desks of this form as evidenced by a bureau with identical roll-top and side decoration in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (ibid., p. 209, fig. 415). Similarly to our desk, many of the abovementioned comparable examples feature deep compartments that are not yet spring-loaded and writing slides connected to the roll-tops with the two moving in conjunction, foreshadowing Roentgen’s mechanical furniture that made him famous all over Europe and for which he is best known today.