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Lot Essay
Jacques Dubois, maître in 1742.
Games-tables were often sold through marchands-tabletiers who, like marchands-merciers, employed various ébénistes to execute their designs. According to L'Académie Universelle des Jeux (Paris, 1730), tric trac tables were used for a wide variety of games such as revertier, toute table, dames rabattues, grand jan, piquet, brelan, quadrille as well as tric-trac, as recorded by the celebrated marchand-mercier Lazare-Duvaux in his livre-journal between 1748 and 1758.
Such indoor games were the preferred pastime of Louis XV, the members of the Court and the landed nobility and the duc de Luynes - chroniqueur of the daily life at Court - is said to have scrupulously recorded the days on which the King did not play such games.
A very closely related tric-trac table by Dubois is in the Wrightsman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, New York, 1966, vol. I, p, 224-225, cat. no. 117). Another closely-related table also stamped by Dubois is illustrated in D. Alcouffe/G. de Bellaigue, Il Mobile Francese, Milan, 1981, a further example another with floral marquetry, reproduced in Connaissance des Arts, Le XVIIIe Siècle Français, p. 51, pl. B.
Jacques Dubois received his maîtrise at the age of forty-eight, and became one of the most distinguished ébénistes of the Louis XV period. Established in the rue de Charenton, Dubois' status as an ouvrier privilégié meant he was free of the strict guild regulations.
Games-tables were often sold through marchands-tabletiers who, like marchands-merciers, employed various ébénistes to execute their designs. According to L'Académie Universelle des Jeux (Paris, 1730), tric trac tables were used for a wide variety of games such as revertier, toute table, dames rabattues, grand jan, piquet, brelan, quadrille as well as tric-trac, as recorded by the celebrated marchand-mercier Lazare-Duvaux in his livre-journal between 1748 and 1758.
Such indoor games were the preferred pastime of Louis XV, the members of the Court and the landed nobility and the duc de Luynes - chroniqueur of the daily life at Court - is said to have scrupulously recorded the days on which the King did not play such games.
A very closely related tric-trac table by Dubois is in the Wrightsman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, New York, 1966, vol. I, p, 224-225, cat. no. 117). Another closely-related table also stamped by Dubois is illustrated in D. Alcouffe/G. de Bellaigue, Il Mobile Francese, Milan, 1981, a further example another with floral marquetry, reproduced in Connaissance des Arts, Le XVIIIe Siècle Français, p. 51, pl. B.
Jacques Dubois received his maîtrise at the age of forty-eight, and became one of the most distinguished ébénistes of the Louis XV period. Established in the rue de Charenton, Dubois' status as an ouvrier privilégié meant he was free of the strict guild regulations.