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Lot Essay
This superb and rare group of painted boiserie panels, with their delicate rinceau scrolls and floral garlands, playful bacchantes and female caryatids issuing from acanthus, reflect the most sophisticated court taste of the 1780s, known as the goût arabesque or gout étrusque, which was promoted by fashionable architects and designers such as Jean Démosthène Dugourc (1749-1825) and François-Joseph Bélanger (1744-1818).
Similar painted arabesque interiors were created for the celebrated collector and patron of Gouthière Louis-Marie-Augustin, duc d’Aumont, for his boudoir in the hôtel d’Aumont (now the hôtel de Crillon), now installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and for the cabinet of the hôtel Mégret de Serilly, designed by the architect Pierre-Noël Rousset and sculptors and painters Jules-Hugue Rousseau (1747-1792) and his brother Jean-Siméon Rousseau de la Rottière (1743-1806), now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see B. Pons, French Period Rooms 1650-1800, Dijon, 1995, pp. 356-370).
A close comparison can also be made with the panels painted for the celebrated cabinet turc at Versailles, commissioned by Louis XVI’s brother the Comte d’Artois and also attributed to the Rousseau frères. Although also including exotically clad Turkish figures, which do not appear on the panels offered here, the cabinet turc panels still feature closely related rinceaux, floral garlands and female caryatids often emerging from acanthus, as on these panels. Eight panels are known to survive from the cabinet turc of the Come d’Artois, six in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (for the examples in Paris, see D. Alcouffe et al., La Folie d’Artois, exh. cat., Paris, 1988, pp. 86-89).
The present example comprises two pairs with an additional single panel portraying Cupid and Psyche. This singular panel is grounded by two winged female figures as opposed to the female satyrs of the other pair framing a grisaille rondel of a satyr and nymph, surmounted by a portrait of Cupid and Psyche embracing. The upper-most register displays a pair of putti flanking a lyre above a small rectangular blue-ground grisaille of cherubs dancing. The first pair of panels with the aforementioned female satyr-supports center on a portrait of Ceres in a red gown with exposed breast and a dancing bacchante with cymbals and pale blue sash. The second pair with a bacchante with bow and arrow and the other holding grapes and a cup complete the series. Each panel is delicately and richly painted with floral swags, cornucopias and sinuous designs of trailing vine.
Similar painted arabesque interiors were created for the celebrated collector and patron of Gouthière Louis-Marie-Augustin, duc d’Aumont, for his boudoir in the hôtel d’Aumont (now the hôtel de Crillon), now installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and for the cabinet of the hôtel Mégret de Serilly, designed by the architect Pierre-Noël Rousset and sculptors and painters Jules-Hugue Rousseau (1747-1792) and his brother Jean-Siméon Rousseau de la Rottière (1743-1806), now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see B. Pons, French Period Rooms 1650-1800, Dijon, 1995, pp. 356-370).
A close comparison can also be made with the panels painted for the celebrated cabinet turc at Versailles, commissioned by Louis XVI’s brother the Comte d’Artois and also attributed to the Rousseau frères. Although also including exotically clad Turkish figures, which do not appear on the panels offered here, the cabinet turc panels still feature closely related rinceaux, floral garlands and female caryatids often emerging from acanthus, as on these panels. Eight panels are known to survive from the cabinet turc of the Come d’Artois, six in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (for the examples in Paris, see D. Alcouffe et al., La Folie d’Artois, exh. cat., Paris, 1988, pp. 86-89).
The present example comprises two pairs with an additional single panel portraying Cupid and Psyche. This singular panel is grounded by two winged female figures as opposed to the female satyrs of the other pair framing a grisaille rondel of a satyr and nymph, surmounted by a portrait of Cupid and Psyche embracing. The upper-most register displays a pair of putti flanking a lyre above a small rectangular blue-ground grisaille of cherubs dancing. The first pair of panels with the aforementioned female satyr-supports center on a portrait of Ceres in a red gown with exposed breast and a dancing bacchante with cymbals and pale blue sash. The second pair with a bacchante with bow and arrow and the other holding grapes and a cup complete the series. Each panel is delicately and richly painted with floral swags, cornucopias and sinuous designs of trailing vine.