This magnificent commode celebrates the 19th century's fascination with the ancien régime of French furniture-making. Using the most sophisticated techniques and exotic veneers, it reincarnates André-Charles Boulle's celebrated design.
André-Charles Boulle
André-Charles Boulle (d.1732), appointed Ebéniste, Ciseleur, Doreur et Sculpteur du Roi in 1672, is among the greatest ébénistes of all time. His fame was such that his name has become synonymous with a whole generic furniture type. In the first decades of the 18th century, while still exploiting the common practice of contrasting black ebony against the gold of gilded bronze and brass, silver-toned pewter and often red-coloured tortoiseshell in marquetry, Boulle introduced light, playful designs enlivened with small-scale, lacy designs of playful singeries, garlands of flowers and airy architectural fantasies. First popularised as a technique in his work for the French Court during the reign of Louis XIV, the style has since been associated with the most opulent and expensive designs.
After his death, Boulle's sons, who had been running the workshops since 1715, continued to produce pieces using their father's techniques and models, as demand for Boulle-marquetried furniture continued throughout the century. Although there was a slight lull in popularity at the peak of the Rococo, Boulle marquetry was again at the height of fashion in the time of Louis XVI when the style of the Sun King underwent a revival. From this time until the beginning of the Empire style circa 1800, great makers such as Levasseur and Baumhauer created their own versions of Boulle's originals and adapted the decorative techniques to furniture forms popular during their own time.
The taste among great collectors for the ancien régime styles of the Louis continued into the 19th century, and Boulle-style furniture held its popularity and prestige. Important makers, such as Sormani, Zwiener, Linke, and Blake, commonly copied or adapted the great pieces of the past, often speculatively but frequently directly when commissioned by the likes of the Rothschilds, the Marquess of Hertford or Henry Clay Frick. Many of these 19th century pieces took their places comfortably side by side with their predecessors from the 17th and 18th centuries in great houses such as Mentmore.
A Brief History of the Boulle Model
A pair of cabinets executed by Andre-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) in circa 1700 entered the permanent collection at the Louvre from the Mobilier National in 1870 (OA 5453-4). These appear to follow in some respects a Boulle design for a cabinet-on-stand dated 1685 which now resides at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, also in Paris (723-C-2).
A further pair of this type by Etienne Levasseur (1721-1798), dated circa 1775, formed part of the collection of Richard Seymour-Conway the 4th Marquess of Hertford, now The Wallace Collection (F391-2). The Wallace examples were included in the Musee Retrospectif exhibition of 1865 in Paris where they no doubt helped to further the fashion for ‘Boulle’ models. .
Another model, apparently produced in either the 1780s or 1790s by Adam Weisweiler (1744-1820) and possibly adapted from a Boulle original, was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum by the renowned 19th century collector, John Jones (1118:3-1882).
In the celebrated Frick Collection a related pair of English mid-19th century cabinets themselves follow a model that was probably originally made in Boulle's workshop between 1710 and 1725 (1916.5.4-05). The latter now forms part of the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1974.39I.2).
Charles-Guillaume Winckelsen
Charles-Guillaume Winckelsen (d. 1871) first established his workshops in 1853 at 23, Val-Sainte-Cathrine before moving to 21, rue Saint-Louis in 1860, and finally to 49, rue de Turenne in 1867. He had a reputation for producing furnishings and bronze mounts in particular of the highest quality, reproducing styles of the ancien régime, particularly those by André-Charles Boulle. On 27 July 1871, Henry Dasson purchased the workshop and stock from Winckelsen's widow for 14,000 francs. The prolific Dasson established Winckelsen's tradition of impeccable workmanship as the benchmark for his own productions.
A related version of the present lot includes a pair of meubles d'appui by Dasson, dated 1875 and 1878, sold Sotheby's, New York, 20 April 2007, lot 213.
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