Louis Delanois maître in 1761.

A celebrated and prolific menuisier, Louis Delanois produced a significant amount of both Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture for the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne. Delanois's famed patrons included the Comte d'Artois (future Charles X, King of France between 1824-1830), the prince de Condé, and King Stanislas II of Poland. He also worked frequently with Paris's marchands-merciers, the majority of these commissions having been recorded in the menuisier's Livre des Ouvrages et Fournitures de Meubles faits à crédit, (1761-1777), now in the Paris city Archives. Furthermore, Delanois supplied extensively to marchands-tapissiers, but also numbered among his clients members of the aristocracy with progressive taste, such as the aforementioned prince de Condé and the celebrated tastemaker Comtesse du Barry.

Delanois was among the first to embrace the Neoclassical style fashionable among avant-garde collectors of the time. One of his most important commissions was for the King of Poland in 1768-70, when he supplied a significant amount of seat-furniture after striking Neoclassical designs by Jean-Louis Prieur (c.1725-c.1785). These included designs for fauteuils with medallion backs, characteristic of the present chairs. These so-called 'Fauteuils oval sculpté à la Grec' first appear in Delanois’ ledger on 28 June 1768, when a large consignment was supplied to the Comte Grimod d'Orsay (see S. Eriksen, Louis Delanois, Paris, 1968, p. 32 and p. 52 and S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, p. 337 and p. 392, no. 165 and nos. 411-414). Another patron, Mme du Barry, famously held a fête at the newly refurbished Pavillon de Louveciennes for her lover Louis XV in September 1771, captured by artist Jean Michel Moreau le jeune (1741-1814) and displaying the new fashion of chair with round backs. Delanois's workshop supplied most of the chairs for her château, though the chairs in this drawing do not appear to match his workshop's account of the commission (see S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, p. 402, no. 474). For related oval-backed chaises supplied by Delanois for Mme Du Barry and Louveciennes, see The Collection of the Late André Meyer; Christie's, New York, 26 October 2001, lots 20-22.