BY GEORGES JACOB, CIRCA 1775

Georges Jacob, maître in 1765.

This striking canape, with its severe architectural form of bound Roman fasces uprights flanked by acanthus garlands and with fluted columnar legs, is typical of the gout grec style fashionable in the 1760s and popularized by influential designers such as Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734-1791). The oval medallion back with fasces is found on a chair design by Boucher le jeune of 1774-5, illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London, 1974, fig. 497. It is also interesting to note that similar fasces uprights for lits d'alcove and used as architectural framing appear in designs by the architect Franois-Joseph Belanger for the bedroom of the comte d'Artois in the chateau de Bagatelle (illustrated in D. Alcouffe et al., La Folie d'Artois, Paris, 1988, pp. 132-3).

The most famous and the most prolific of all eighteenth-century French chair makers, Georges Jacob (1739-1814) produced an incalculable quantity of chairs of all types and styles from the reign of Louis XV until the Consulat. From 1773 until the revolution, Georges Jacob worked continuously for the French royal family, furnishing the main royal residences including Versailles and undertaking many commissions for members of the royal court.

Alexis von Roseberg, Baron de Redé (1922-2004) was a man of impeccable taste and one of the most important figures of Parisian high society during his life. Born in Zurich he lived in Switzerland and New York before ultimately making his home in France. In 1947 he moved into the seventeenth-century Hôtel Lambert in Paris, which he fully restored; a work for which he was appointed commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres towards the end of his life. He shared this Parisian home with his married Chilean millionaire partner Arturo López Willshaw, with whom he hosted lavish and extravagant parties famous throughout Europe. The Baron was described as 'the Eugène de Rastignac of modern Paris' by Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon and as the greatest host in Europe.