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Lot Essay
This Louis XVI style commode is a copy of the celebrated model produced by the workshop of Jean-François Leleu. The original is in Château Versaille, Petit Trianon, and illustrated in P. Arrizzoli-Clementel Versailles Furniture of the Royal Palace, volume 2, Dijon, 2002, pp. 122-123. The Leleu commode arrived at the Petit Trianon in 1867 in the wake of an exhibition organised at the request of Empress Eugenie in memory of Marie Antoinette. Possibly this same exhibition inspired the comission of the present copy by Sormani.
A pupil and later collaborator with Jean-François Oeben, Jean-François Leleu became maître on the latter's death in 1763. His work can be divided into two concurrent but distinct styles: the first, owing more to the legacy of Oeben, being of large, solid forms, more noble in style; the second, although retaining the clean, definite lines of the first, being an exercise in elegance and understatement. It is this second style for which Leleu is chiefly remembered and which the present commode, with its lightly bombé form and restrained frieze mounts, is a principal example.
Born in the Kingdom of Lombardy, Venice, in 1817, Paul Sormani produced standard and fantasy furniture, described by himself as "meubles de luxe". Operating from large premises at 114, rue du Temple and, from 1867, at 10, rue Charlot, he specialised in reproducing styles of the Louis XV and XVI eras and his work was thought to reveal "une qualiti d'exicution de tout premier ordre". His creations were frequently exhibited and rewarded at the major international exhibitions of the 1860s and 70s. On his death in 1877, the firm was taken over by his widow, Ursule-Marie-Philippine Bouvaist, who was known as 'Veuve Sormani' and was joined and later succeeded by her son.
A pupil and later collaborator with Jean-François Oeben, Jean-François Leleu became maître on the latter's death in 1763. His work can be divided into two concurrent but distinct styles: the first, owing more to the legacy of Oeben, being of large, solid forms, more noble in style; the second, although retaining the clean, definite lines of the first, being an exercise in elegance and understatement. It is this second style for which Leleu is chiefly remembered and which the present commode, with its lightly bombé form and restrained frieze mounts, is a principal example.
Born in the Kingdom of Lombardy, Venice, in 1817, Paul Sormani produced standard and fantasy furniture, described by himself as "meubles de luxe". Operating from large premises at 114, rue du Temple and, from 1867, at 10, rue Charlot, he specialised in reproducing styles of the Louis XV and XVI eras and his work was thought to reveal "une qualiti d'exicution de tout premier ordre". His creations were frequently exhibited and rewarded at the major international exhibitions of the 1860s and 70s. On his death in 1877, the firm was taken over by his widow, Ursule-Marie-Philippine Bouvaist, who was known as 'Veuve Sormani' and was joined and later succeeded by her son.