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Lot Essay
The ormolu-enriched commode is inlaid in the George III French/antique fashion. Sacred urns displayed within Roman medallions harmonize with the 1760s Etruscan columbarium style introduced by the Rome-trained court architect Robert Adam (d.1792). The urns, of bacchic wine-krater form enriched with reeds, are displayed on festive altar-pedestals decked with fruit and attended by exotic birds; while their foliated medallions are accompanied by laurelled Roman foliage issuing from the Grecian ribbon-fretted corners of their tablet frames. The top is similarly inlaid with a trompe l'oeil of a flower-filled basket in the Louis Quatorze Roman fashion popularized by the engraved oeuvres of the French artist Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (d.1699). In the interior, drawers surround around a central night-table compartment; and sprigs of roses, sacred to Venus, are inlaid on the doors.
The fashion for inlaid commodes was promoted in the 1760s by the Paris-trained ebeniste Pierre Langlois (d.1767) of Tottenham Court Road. The serpentine commode shares many of its decorative details - such as the urn-filled oval medallions, geometric angled surrounds, floral clasped borders and flower-filled basket - and its simple deal construction with a group of commodes and chest-commodes identified by Lucy Wood in her Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, group 17, pp. 166-170. While the name of Langlois and other pre-eminent cabinet-makers such as the Royal cabinet-maker John Cobb are used in conjunction with this type of decoration, Lucy Wood proposes an immigrant maker for the group. Related medallions also feature on the group linked with one supplied in 1772 for Corsham Court, Wiltshire by Cobb (L. Wood, op. cit., p.91, figs. 75-77).
A commode of this precise pattern sold at Bonhams, London in the mid-1970s, and was illustrated in their advertisement in the 1976 Grosvenor House Fair Catalogue. This example was further embellished with ormolu chutes and border to the top. Another matching commode was sold Phillips, London, 21 June 1994, lot 81. While apparently identical to the present example according to the description, this commode differed in the floral-embellishment of its interior long drawer. Its central recess bore a label indistinctly inscribed Mrs E Collinson..Mabel Berberrer [?]
THE PROVENANCE
According to the owner, this commode descended in the family of Consuelo Vanderbilt, later Madame Jacques Balsan (d. 1964). The daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt, a New York railroad millionaire, and Alva Smith Belmont, Consuelo was a celebrated debutante at her family's spectacular Newport residence, Marble House, where in August of 1895 she met Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. She married the Duke that autumn under pressure from her mother and returned to England to live at the Duke's monumental seat Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire also the birth place of Winston Churchill. Consuelo separated from the 9th Duke in 1905 and was officially divorced in 1921 at which time she married the French aviator, Jacques Balsan, and settled in France. The couple divided their time between the splendid 17th century Chateau de Saint-Georges-Motel, near Eure, Normandy and the Hotel Marlborough, Paris, both of which they filled with exceptional French furniture and works of art of the ancien regime. The commode, very much in this taste, does not appear in any of the rooms photographed in the catalogue of the Hotel Marlborough which was privately printed in around 1930.
The commode directly descended through the Spencer-Churchill family and entered the present family's collection through the marriage to a great grand-daughter of Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke. The archives preserved at the British Library for the 19th and early 20th century Dukes are comparatively few and do not shed light on where this commode may have resided in the collection.
Please see lot 72 which also shares this provenance.
The fashion for inlaid commodes was promoted in the 1760s by the Paris-trained ebeniste Pierre Langlois (d.1767) of Tottenham Court Road. The serpentine commode shares many of its decorative details - such as the urn-filled oval medallions, geometric angled surrounds, floral clasped borders and flower-filled basket - and its simple deal construction with a group of commodes and chest-commodes identified by Lucy Wood in her Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, group 17, pp. 166-170. While the name of Langlois and other pre-eminent cabinet-makers such as the Royal cabinet-maker John Cobb are used in conjunction with this type of decoration, Lucy Wood proposes an immigrant maker for the group. Related medallions also feature on the group linked with one supplied in 1772 for Corsham Court, Wiltshire by Cobb (L. Wood, op. cit., p.91, figs. 75-77).
A commode of this precise pattern sold at Bonhams, London in the mid-1970s, and was illustrated in their advertisement in the 1976 Grosvenor House Fair Catalogue. This example was further embellished with ormolu chutes and border to the top. Another matching commode was sold Phillips, London, 21 June 1994, lot 81. While apparently identical to the present example according to the description, this commode differed in the floral-embellishment of its interior long drawer. Its central recess bore a label indistinctly inscribed Mrs E Collinson..Mabel Berberrer [?]
THE PROVENANCE
According to the owner, this commode descended in the family of Consuelo Vanderbilt, later Madame Jacques Balsan (d. 1964). The daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt, a New York railroad millionaire, and Alva Smith Belmont, Consuelo was a celebrated debutante at her family's spectacular Newport residence, Marble House, where in August of 1895 she met Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. She married the Duke that autumn under pressure from her mother and returned to England to live at the Duke's monumental seat Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire also the birth place of Winston Churchill. Consuelo separated from the 9th Duke in 1905 and was officially divorced in 1921 at which time she married the French aviator, Jacques Balsan, and settled in France. The couple divided their time between the splendid 17th century Chateau de Saint-Georges-Motel, near Eure, Normandy and the Hotel Marlborough, Paris, both of which they filled with exceptional French furniture and works of art of the ancien regime. The commode, very much in this taste, does not appear in any of the rooms photographed in the catalogue of the Hotel Marlborough which was privately printed in around 1930.
The commode directly descended through the Spencer-Churchill family and entered the present family's collection through the marriage to a great grand-daughter of Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke. The archives preserved at the British Library for the 19th and early 20th century Dukes are comparatively few and do not shed light on where this commode may have resided in the collection.
Please see lot 72 which also shares this provenance.