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Lot Essay
Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer, maître in 1794.
In the second half of the 18th century, tabletiers such as Compigné (tabletier du Roi) and Claude-Louis Chevalier fostered a popular interest in objets d'art with architectural views. This was subsequently mirrorred in the wares of the marchands-merciers. A Louis XVI table of similar inspiration incorporating a glazed, coloured engraving of the Vue du Palais-Bourbon et de l'Ancien Hôtel de Lassay was sold from the collection of Paul Dutasta, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 7-8 June 1912, lot 332.
This elegant ormolu-enriched tea-table, with tray-galleried marble top, was designed in 1772 to display pearl-framed tablets with landscape views and architectural elevations of a palatial villa. Although the Palace remains tantalisingly untraced - and perhaps was never actually built - the distinctive ogee-domes and façade of the service wing point to a non-French origin, probably either in the Low Countries or in Germany. Acanthus-wrapped bouquets tied by pearled ribbon-guilloches to the angles display roses, sacred to the nature deity Venus; while the legs' taper-hermed pilasters are inlaid with trompe l'oeil flutes festooned with pearled acanthus hung from rose-trellised cartouches.
Little is recorded of the artist Jacques Mullart. He appears to have been a pupil at the Ecole de Dessin in Rouen, where he is recorded as having won a prize at the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres and Arts on 4 August 1750 (P. Sanchez, Dictionnaire des Artistes exposant dans les salons des XVIIe et XVIIIe s. à Paris et en Province 1673-1800, Dijon, p. 1256).
In the second half of the 18th century, tabletiers such as Compigné (tabletier du Roi) and Claude-Louis Chevalier fostered a popular interest in objets d'art with architectural views. This was subsequently mirrorred in the wares of the marchands-merciers. A Louis XVI table of similar inspiration incorporating a glazed, coloured engraving of the Vue du Palais-Bourbon et de l'Ancien Hôtel de Lassay was sold from the collection of Paul Dutasta, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 7-8 June 1912, lot 332.
This elegant ormolu-enriched tea-table, with tray-galleried marble top, was designed in 1772 to display pearl-framed tablets with landscape views and architectural elevations of a palatial villa. Although the Palace remains tantalisingly untraced - and perhaps was never actually built - the distinctive ogee-domes and façade of the service wing point to a non-French origin, probably either in the Low Countries or in Germany. Acanthus-wrapped bouquets tied by pearled ribbon-guilloches to the angles display roses, sacred to the nature deity Venus; while the legs' taper-hermed pilasters are inlaid with trompe l'oeil flutes festooned with pearled acanthus hung from rose-trellised cartouches.
Little is recorded of the artist Jacques Mullart. He appears to have been a pupil at the Ecole de Dessin in Rouen, where he is recorded as having won a prize at the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres and Arts on 4 August 1750 (P. Sanchez, Dictionnaire des Artistes exposant dans les salons des XVIIe et XVIIIe s. à Paris et en Province 1673-1800, Dijon, p. 1256).