Georges Jacob, maître in 1765.

The reverse scroll-carved legs of these chairs are hallmarks of Georges Jacob’s oeuvre. Jacob employed this distinctive leg on various types of seat furniture he supplied for the Royal Court. Examples of such commissions are a chaise at the Château de Fontainebleau, see l. in Madeleine Jarry, La Siège Français, Paris, 1973, p. 175, and a suite of seat furniture jointly executed by Jacob and Jean-Baptiste Sené, formerly in the salle à manger of Madame Elisabeth at the Château de Montreuil, sold Tajan, Paris, 5 December 1989, lot 95 and again sold (in part), Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2010, lot 44.

The most famous and the most prolific of all eighteenth-century French chair makers, Georges Jacob (1739-1814) produced an incalculable quantity of chairs of all types and styles from the reign of Louis XV until the Consulat. From 1773 until the revolution, Georges Jacob worked continuously for the royal family, furnishing the main royal residences including Versailles and undertaking many commissions for members of the royal court. Although Jacob was particularly concerned with detail and made sure that each of his sets remained unique, he did reuse certain motifs, such as the reverse scroll-carved leg, and adapted them to new creations. At the end of the Ancien Régime he conceived furniture in solid mahogany in the Etruscan manner. He retired in 1796, leaving his five sons to continue his business, which they did until 1813 when the firm, by then called Jacob-Desmalter & Co., went into administration.