PAIRE DE CHAISES D`ÉPOQUE LOUIS XVI

Los 34
20.11.2024 16:00UTC +01:00
Classic
Verkauft
€ 60 480
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortFrankreich, Paris
Archiv
Die Auktion ist abgeschlossen. Es können keine Gebote mehr abgegeben werden.
Archive
ID 1329890
Los 34 | PAIRE DE CHAISES D'ÉPOQUE LOUIS XVI
Schätzwert
€ 40 000 – 60 000
PAIRE DE CHAISES D'ÉPOQUE LOUIS XVI
ESTAMPILLE DE GEORGES JACOB, VERS 1785
En noyer mouluré sculpté, laqué et partiellement doré, le dossier carré et l'assise trapézoïdales à décor de ronces et de bambous entrelacés, noués anx angles, les dés de raccordement ornés de feuilles exotiques, estampillées chacune 'G. IACOB' sur la traverse avant, portent chacune une étiquette numérotée '115', une trace d'étiquette et une inscription à l'encre, la couverture de soie ivoire brodée d'une rose sur le dossier et passementerie
H. 86,5 cm. (34 in.) ; L. 47 cm. (18 ½ in.) ; P. 44 cm. (17 ¼ in.)
Georges Jacob, reçu maître le 4 septembre 1765.




Provenance

Collection privée française.



Further details

A PAIR OF LOUIS XVI TINTED AND PARTLY GILT WALNUT CHAIRS STAMPED BY GEORGES JACOB, CIRCA 1785

A symbol of the naturalism and inventiveness of Georges Jacob's work

Carved with brambles and decorated with finely carved and naturally painted interlaced reeds, this pair of chairs bears witness to the exceptional ornamental creativity of Georges Jacob (1739-1814), the most famous and prolific chair-maker of the 18th century. Jacob's work is immense: in terms of quantity, quality and diversity, but also in terms of the innovations that made him a true trailblazer. He adorned his most luxurious models with ribbons, garlands of foliage, bundles of arrows, twists, pearls, interlacing friezes and piasters, and sometimes with eagles' heads or even mermaids, like those adorning the armrests of his broken cabriolet chaise longue in the Musée Jacquemart-André.

The decoration on this pair of chairs, which perfectly conveys the roughness of the brambles and the suppleness of the reeds, is remarkably naturalistic, as can be seen in many of Jacob's works. The ‘Mobilier aux épis’ delivered for Marie-Antoinette at the Petit Trianon around 1785 features particularly meticulous and realistic sculpted ornamentation, which some explain by the cabinetmaker's peasant ancestry: ears of wheat, lilac flowers, lilies of the valley, violets, roses, vines, laurels, oak leaves and pine cones. The furniture was sculpted by Jean-Baptiste Rhode, whom Jacob commissioned to carve the most ambitious chairs, such as our pair of chairs.

Like our pair, Jacob also produced a number of works in response to the exoticism fashionable in the second half of the 18th century. Influenced in particular by Anglomania, the fashion for mahogany developed, which Jacob sometimes replaced, as on these chairs, with walnut, which he ‘coloured with mahogany and polished with wax’. While the writings of Rousseau and garden enthusiasts such as Watelet and the Duc d'Harcourt helped to revive a taste for the picturesque, letters from Jesuit missionaries introduced Chinese gardens to France. This fashion for the exotic gave rise, in Jacob's workshop, to models that were sometimes strange, some imitating a bamboo trellis (an armchair sold in Paris on 6 April 1960, no. 79); others, intended for Mme de Marbeuf, made up of a curious geometric assembly in polychrome wood, evoking a Chinese pagoda (Bowes Museum, Bernard Castle). A bergère à la reine stamped by Jacob, with a back flanked by burst seeds and uprights imitating bamboo, was sold at Christie's in Paris on 4 October 2012, lot 80.

As mentioned by Hector Lefuel in his monograph on Georges Jacob (H. Lefuel, Georges Jacob, ébéniste du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1923, Jacob), Jacob made ‘Chinese fruits from which seeds come out’. For a mahogany armchair for Marie-Antoinette, he made ‘bamboo-shaped legs’, with branches of myrtle and ivy that ‘seem to have been picked from the ground’. Like our chairs, other armchairs made for Marie-Antoinette by Jacob for the Tuileries in 1784 feature ‘small parasols’ on the connecting dice. Another chair, mentioned by Hector Lefuel in his monograph, has ‘Chinese-shaped legs and is enclosed under bamboo tied at intervals with tores of rope, all made with great care and polished with petrol’. Finally, the author cites a chair delivered to Marie-Antoinette at the Petit Trianon that is almost identical to our pair: « Une chaise de forme nouvelle faite en bois d’acajou, cintrée en plan et en élévation ; le cintre et le petit dossier sont composés de bambous entrelacés enrichis de branches et de nœuds qui garnissent les vides qui se trouvent entre le branches ; les montants sont des colonnes d’une forme étrangère et en balustre, enrichis de feuilles haut et bas. Le corps des montants est composé de cannelures méplates enrichies d’ornements antiques et étrangers, et au-dessus sont des fruits chinois ; les assemblages sont des bambous qui se croisent noués par distance avec des profils ; les pieds sont quatre bambous avec des branches et des nœuds »

The object of a prestigious commission for an exceptional site: an 18th-century ‘folie’.

The similarity of certain chairs supplied to Marie-Antoinette by Jacob with our pair confirms their undoubtedly prestigious provenance. Not mentioned in the inventories of Jacob's work available in the French archives of works supplied to the Crown and to the most important princely patrons, this pair of chairs is a genuine rediscovery of a masterpiece by the cabinetmaker.

Although these chairs do not appear to have been delivered to the royal couple, they were probably commissioned by one of Jacob's wealthier clients, such as the Duc d'Orléans, the banker Laborde, the Marquis de Marboeuf, the Comte de Kerry, the King of Naples and the Comtesse de Provence, who asked him for ‘Chinese apple’ pieces, the Prince de Condé, the Duc de Chartres, the Comte d'Artois, the Prince de Conti, the Duc de Liancourt and de la Rochefoucault d'Enville, the Marquis de Paulmy, Madame Elisabeth, sister of Louis XVI, the Duc de Penthièvre, the Duc de Bavière, the Duc Deux-Ponts Charles Théodore, and Princess Kinsky. In 1790, Princess Kinsky decorated the Chinese pavilion, the orangery and the greenhouse of her Paris mansion with Jacob's chairs, with ‘front legs turned in the manner of bamboo’, although they were more stylised and neoclassical than our own.

It is possible to imagine these chairs being commissioned by the Prince of Condé for one of the pavilions in the Anglo-Chinese garden at Chantilly, or by the Count of Artois for the pavilions at Bagatelle, known as the ‘Folies’ for the fantasy and caprice of their interior decorations with rural and exotic themes. This pair of chairs is reminiscent of the fantasy and naturalism of the furniture in the thatched cottage with shells in Rambouillet, designed by François II Foliot, whose marine concretions and sculpted shells on the seats match the interior architecture and the walls of the pavilion, covered in mosaics of mother-of-pearl and shells.

Bagatelle's rival, the folie de M. de Sainte James in Neuilly-sur-Seine, is a residence surrounded by an Anglo-Chinese garden, in which our pair of chairs could be perfectly imagined. Like Bagatelle and the pavilions of the Folie d'Artois, it is the paradigmatic example of the ‘picturesque garden’ and one of the most spectacular follies of the last years of the Ancien Régime. On the edge of a muddy stretch of water stands a kiosk on stilts imitating bamboo, reached by a pirogue decorated with sails. A little further on, a large central recessed porch with a faux bamboo door opens onto a bathing salon. Jacob probably designed this pair of chairs for such an environment.

Similarly, the Hôtel de Noailles in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and its pavilions are perfectly likely to have been decorated with seats like ours. One pavilion, known as the ‘rotunda’, had fresh, luxurious furnishings painted in faux bois, while another, with ‘mosaic crosspieces’, had a ‘reed-covered bauge’ exterior. Several other pavilions of a more ephemeral nature are also listed in the estate's inventory, as ‘garden trinkets’.

Although the provenance of these chairs is still unknown, it contributes to the mystery of their rediscovery and to the charm of their décor, which is both meticulously naturalistic and capriciously imaginary.
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