The present lot is designed after the celebrated example by eighteenth-century maker Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené. Sené supplied the armchair to Marie-Antoinette for her cabinet de toitelle at the Château de Saint Cloud by 1788, as part of a suite of furniture comprising a daybed, a stool and a set of four bergères. The gilt-walnut suite is elaborately carved with garlands of roses, tendrils of ivy, and ionic capitals surmounted by Egyptian caryatids. The cresting includes a medallion with Marie-Antoinette’s initials framed by myrtle branches and roses. One bergère is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (No. 41.205.2). The present lot’s decoration differs very slightly with classically draped female busts surmounting the uprights on the armrests, but otherwise very closely follows the original design in both ornament and execution.

The legendary firm of Maison Jansen was founded by Henri Jansen in 1880. Dutch by birth, he established the decorating, furniture-making and antique-dealing firm first in Paris, and later expanding to a variety of cities around the world establishing itself as one of the first international design firms. When he died in 1928, Maison Jansen had outposts in major cities throughout the world: London, New York, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Havana, Prague, Rome and Rio de Janeiro. Maison Jansen approach to design and decoration differed to its competitors of the day; the firm was not only skilled in sourcing exceptional antiques, but also began to reproduce furniture to suit their client’s needs. By 1900, Maison Jansen was commissioning so much furniture that it established its own atelier, which at the height of its operations, employed 700 artisans. One of the firms more illustrious periods of success was during the 1930's, when Stéphane Boudin directed the firm, and its style focused on traditional French designs, in the manner of tous les Louis. Jansen clientele consisted of the crème-de-la-crème of high society, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Egypt’s King Farouk, and Elsie de Woulfe, to name a few.