.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Executed in the florid neo-Rococo style, this exuberant console table fully encapsulates the late 19th century fascination with rocaille furniture of the Ancien Régime. Inspired by models of the 18th century, the present table is also closely related to the celebrated designs and sculptures of Léon Messagé, who created some of the finest ormolu mounts of the Belle Époque, often in collaboration with the era’s famed ébénistes such as François Linke and Joseph-Emmanuel Zwiener.
In the mid-18th century, French furniture makers and bronziers created console tables in polished steel enriched with elaborate gilt bronze mounts for some of the grandest palaces and residences of the era, though seemingly few remain. A design by Victor Louis and Jean Louis Prieur dated to 1766 for a console for the King of Poland is thought to be the inspiration for a series of elegant tables attributed to Pierre II Deumier including one in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Epr-2736), two in the Musée Nessim de Camondo, Paris (190) and one in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (88.DF.118). As all three tables are set with scrolling acanthus-cast supports, foliate friezes and serpentine marble tops, it is possible that they served as the inspiration for the present lot.
The present console, however, is an unmistakable fin de siècle mélange of 18th and 19th century sources of design. With its pierced frieze and supports, trailing foliate garlands and elaborate stretcher, the present lot is closely related to a design for a console table by the celebrated sculptor Léon Messagé published in his Cahier des dessins et croquis style Louis XV of 1890 and illustrated in C. Mestdagh, L’Ameublement d’art français 1850-1900, Paris, 2010, p. 139, fig. 151. In the design, Messagé illustrates a console table with a stretcher surmounted a bow-and-arrow-bearing putto, and a serpentine frieze undulating with flowering roses and chrysanthemum. While the present table is not an exact realization of the design – distinguished most notably by the stretcher which here bears a triton and dolphin – the sculptural quality of the mounts relate it to Messagé’s oeuvre. As the master’s designs were circulated and referenced by furniture makers of the Belle Époque, namely Joseph-Emmanuel Zwiener and François Linke, it is possible that this seemingly unique table was the outcome of a collaboration with one of Messagé’s confreres of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in Paris, a splendid tour de force of néo-rocaille design.
In the mid-18th century, French furniture makers and bronziers created console tables in polished steel enriched with elaborate gilt bronze mounts for some of the grandest palaces and residences of the era, though seemingly few remain. A design by Victor Louis and Jean Louis Prieur dated to 1766 for a console for the King of Poland is thought to be the inspiration for a series of elegant tables attributed to Pierre II Deumier including one in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Epr-2736), two in the Musée Nessim de Camondo, Paris (190) and one in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (88.DF.118). As all three tables are set with scrolling acanthus-cast supports, foliate friezes and serpentine marble tops, it is possible that they served as the inspiration for the present lot.
The present console, however, is an unmistakable fin de siècle mélange of 18th and 19th century sources of design. With its pierced frieze and supports, trailing foliate garlands and elaborate stretcher, the present lot is closely related to a design for a console table by the celebrated sculptor Léon Messagé published in his Cahier des dessins et croquis style Louis XV of 1890 and illustrated in C. Mestdagh, L’Ameublement d’art français 1850-1900, Paris, 2010, p. 139, fig. 151. In the design, Messagé illustrates a console table with a stretcher surmounted a bow-and-arrow-bearing putto, and a serpentine frieze undulating with flowering roses and chrysanthemum. While the present table is not an exact realization of the design – distinguished most notably by the stretcher which here bears a triton and dolphin – the sculptural quality of the mounts relate it to Messagé’s oeuvre. As the master’s designs were circulated and referenced by furniture makers of the Belle Époque, namely Joseph-Emmanuel Zwiener and François Linke, it is possible that this seemingly unique table was the outcome of a collaboration with one of Messagé’s confreres of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in Paris, a splendid tour de force of néo-rocaille design.