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Lot Essay
These magnificent consoles, with their flowing rocailles and fierce chimerae, epitomize the pittoresque style of the 1730's popularized by influential ornemanistes such as Nicolas Pineau (1684 - 1754).
The deeply scalloped cartouche to the frieze and shell-headed legs relate it closely to a design for a console in Pineau's Nouveaux Desseins de Pieds de Tables, while a similar cartouche and scrolled feet feature on a console designed by Pineau circa 1731 - 1732 for the hôtel de Villars. The carving to the frieze and undertier are found on drawings now in Stockholm and in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, while the same feet appear in a drawing from Pineau's workshop in the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.
Exotic dragons are a central part of the vocabulary of the rococo, and appear in the form of boiseries, incorporated into the carving of menuiseries such as chairs and consoles, and as bronzes d'ameublement such as chenets and candelabra, including the celebrated girandoles de cheminée in the form of dragons supplied to Joseph-Antoine Crozat de Tugny in 1745, a pair of which was also formerly in the collection of Hubert de Givenchy (sold Christie's, Monaco, 4 December 1993, lot 32).
Designs for similar chimeric birds appear in a series of drawings by the court sculpteur and ornemaniste Mathieu Legoupil in the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (illustrated in B. Pons, De Paris à Versailles, Paris, 1983, fig. 424).
The son of the court sculpteur Jean-Baptiste Pineau, Nicolas Pineau studied architecture under Jules Hardouin Mansart and Germain Boffrand. In 1716, he accompanied the architect Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste le Blond to Russia to work for Peter the Great, where he assisted in decorating the interiors of Peterhof Palace and the St. Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg. On returning to Paris in 1727, he helped to propagate the new taste for the rococo in a series of influential interiors for hôtels in Paris, including the hôtel d'Orrouer and the hôtel de Rouille in 1732, and the hôtel de Mazarin in 1734.
The deeply scalloped cartouche to the frieze and shell-headed legs relate it closely to a design for a console in Pineau's Nouveaux Desseins de Pieds de Tables, while a similar cartouche and scrolled feet feature on a console designed by Pineau circa 1731 - 1732 for the hôtel de Villars. The carving to the frieze and undertier are found on drawings now in Stockholm and in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, while the same feet appear in a drawing from Pineau's workshop in the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.
Exotic dragons are a central part of the vocabulary of the rococo, and appear in the form of boiseries, incorporated into the carving of menuiseries such as chairs and consoles, and as bronzes d'ameublement such as chenets and candelabra, including the celebrated girandoles de cheminée in the form of dragons supplied to Joseph-Antoine Crozat de Tugny in 1745, a pair of which was also formerly in the collection of Hubert de Givenchy (sold Christie's, Monaco, 4 December 1993, lot 32).
Designs for similar chimeric birds appear in a series of drawings by the court sculpteur and ornemaniste Mathieu Legoupil in the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (illustrated in B. Pons, De Paris à Versailles, Paris, 1983, fig. 424).
The son of the court sculpteur Jean-Baptiste Pineau, Nicolas Pineau studied architecture under Jules Hardouin Mansart and Germain Boffrand. In 1716, he accompanied the architect Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste le Blond to Russia to work for Peter the Great, where he assisted in decorating the interiors of Peterhof Palace and the St. Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg. On returning to Paris in 1727, he helped to propagate the new taste for the rococo in a series of influential interiors for hôtels in Paris, including the hôtel d'Orrouer and the hôtel de Rouille in 1732, and the hôtel de Mazarin in 1734.