Chest of drawers
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Rectangular break-fronted chest of drawers, with three small drawers in a frieze and two larger ones beneath, decorated with panels of floral and fret-work marquetry, enriched with gilt bronze mounts, and having a separate Breccia marble top.
The front breaks forwards at two places, giving the illusion of three superimposed layers of applied ornament. The central area has a flat trapeze-shaped panel veneered with marquetry of different woods depicting a bowl of flowers, which includes lilies, tulips, roses, carnations, anemones and narcissi, in a sunken reserve bordered by a gilt-bronze mount chased with two strings of beads, with four separate circular mounts of flower heads contained within a laurel wreath at each of the corners.
On either side of the central panel are the convex curved ends of a second panel veneered with purplewood and framed with similar gilt-bronze mounts. The outermost panels are rectangular in shape and with a flat profile, the reserves veneered with fret-work marquetry, each fret enclosing a waterlily.The whole of the front is enriched with further gilt bronze mounts in the form of laurel swags, suspended by two crinkled-ribbons tied to feigned studs, that form the handles of the upper of the two large drawers. The cusped-apron of the lower drawer has an applied mount of symmetrically scrolling acanthus leaf ornament.
At the top of the front is a narrow frieze containing three small drawers, the fronts veneered with purplewood and dyed sycamore, and having gilt-bronze mounts of intertwining acanthus branches, tied with blown ribbons at the point at which the branches cross, on the central drawer, and a guilloche design on the outer drawers. Each of the three drawers has a centrally placed and hinged laurel wreath mount that forms the handle around the key escutcheon.
The four corners of the chest of drawers form the legs, each mounted with a large gilt bronze acanthus rosette with seed heads at the level of the frieze. Below this level, on the fore-corners is a gilt-bronze acanthus scroll console, from which the leg descends as a tapering pilaster with a sunken register veneered with tulipwood in a herring bone design, bordered by a gilt bronze mount of waterleaves on either side. At the base, the fore-feet are shod with a gilt bronze mount of scrolled acanthus leaves, which divide at the top, and rest on segmental bases of gilt bronze. The back legs are treated in a similar way, although the pilasters do not taper, and they lack the acanthus console at the top and scrolls at the base.
This chest of drawers was ordered on 8 February 1776 from Jean-Henri Riesener by the comtesse de Provence (wife of the eldest brother of Louis XVI) for her bedroom in her apartments at Versailles. It was delivered as No. 2842 on 30th March 1776, recorded in the Journal du Garde-Meuble. It cost 7,750 livres, making it the most expensive chest of drawers that year, perhaps reflecting the speed with which it was delivered. Riesener visited the comtesse at Versailles to discuss the commission of the piece, take measurements and show her a drawing.
It is an early version of a series of chests of drawers with trapezoid pictorial panels, explored in detail by Christian Baulez (see bibliography). The lozenge marquetry on the front of the chest of drawers is applied over a veneer of oak over a veneer of purplewood, which could suggest the marquetry was pre-assembled.
Miss Alice de Rothschild acquired it from her agent Samson Wertheimer, who purchased it at the Hamilton Palace Sale (lot 528, £2,310), one of the greatest sales in the nineteenth century, and at which a number of exceptional pieces of eighteenth-century French furniture were bought by Alice, her brother Baron Ferdinand and their cousin Baron Edmond. She displayed it in her first floor sitting room at Waddesdon Manor, as a pair to WM 2252.
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
956 x 1715 x 651
Labels
HAMILTON PALACE, No.528
Label
Pasted on the back as a printed label, the number written in ink
Provenance
- Supplied to Marie-Josèphe-Louise, comtesse de Provence (b. 1753, d. 1810) 30 March 1776; acquired by Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton (b. 1767, d. 1852) by 1852; by descent to his son William Alexander Archibald, 11th Duke of Hamilton (b. 1811, d. 1863); by descent to his son William Douglas-Hamilton, 12th Duke of Hamilton (b. 1845, d. 1895; his sale, 17 June–20 July 1882, lot 528, at which bought by Samson Wertheimer (d. 1892) for Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d. 1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.
Collection
- Waddesdon (National Trust)
- Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957
Bibliography
- ♦; Christian Baulez, fall-front desk, La Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, 3, June 1998, 13-14
- Jane Turner; Dictionary of Art; 34 vols; London; Grove; 1996; vol. 20, p 469
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts; Paris; Gazette des Beaux-Arts; 1959
- Kunst & Antiquitäten; VI/80, Nov./Dez.
- Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Anthony Blunt; Furniture Clocks and Gilt Bronzes: The James A de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; 2 vols; Fribourg; Office du Livre; 1974; Volume 1; pp. 239-246
- Les collections exceptionnelles des Rothschild: Waddesdon Manor (Hors-série de l'Estampille/l'Objet d'Art, No. 14); Dijon; Éditions Faton; 2004; Page 10 - 21
- Versailles: deux siècles d'histoire de l'art. Études et chroniques de Christian Baulez; Versailles; Société des Amis de Versailles; 2007; p. 147
- Pierre Ramond; Chefs-d'Oeuvre des Marqueteurs; vol 3; Paris; Éditions Gallimard; 1999; Vol. III, pp. 60 - 61
- ♦, ♦; Ulrich Leben, Danielle Kisluk-Grosheide, Deborah L. Krohn; Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and the French Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (April 4 to August 11, 2013); Italy; Yale University Press, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Helen Jacobsen, Rufus Bird, Mia Jackson; Jean-Henri Riesener: Cabinetmaker to Louis XVI & Marie-Antoinette Furniture in the Wallace Collection, the Royal Collection & Waddesdon Manor; Philip Wilson Publishers
- Ulrich Leben; Riesener and the Rothschilds; 79-107; P. 83