Henri Jacob, maître in 1779.

Henri Jacob was born in 1753 and trained with his cousin, the celebrated menuisier Georges Jacob, for six years before receiving his maîtrise in 1779. He became an accomplished and prolific menuisier-ébéniste, soon counting among his most illustrious clients the future Paul I of Russia and his wife, Maria Feodorovna. As early as 1782, when the future tsar and his spouse traveled to France incognito as the 'comte and comtesse du Nord', they selected Jacob to produce an order of over two hundred chairs and other pieces of furniture for Pavlovsk, their new palace near St. Petersburg (D. Ledoux-Lebard, ‘Henri Jacob, un menuisier-ébéniste original’, L’Estampille-Objet d’Art, March 1995, pp. 46-57).

Henri's oeuvre is often compared with that of his celebrated cousin, given the undeniable similarities and rapprochements, the impeccable quality of his work and the Royal patronage that both enjoyed. Like Georges, Henri also produced both seats and case furniture towards the end of his career, after the abolition of the guilds freed him from their restrictions on furniture production. As witnessed by this lot, a great amount of Henri's production consisted of mahogany seat furniture from the Louis XVI, Directoire and Consulat periods, executed to rigorous and exacting standards. Reflecting Georges' influence on his work, Henri employed several elements characteristic of Georges' oeuvre in his own production, including the slender and elegant baluster arm supports seen on the present fauteuils. A matched pair of white-painted voyeuses with similar lyre backs and rounded seats by Henri Jacob was sold from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Gutfreund, Christie's, New York, 27 January 2021, lot 265 ($17,500).