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Lot Essay
Furniture embellished with oriental lacquer was among the most prized within the oeuvre of the esteemed ébéniste Jacques Dubois (maître in 1742, d. 1763) and a number of pieces were acquired by Madame de Pompadour, the King’s mistress, including in 1755 a bureau en pente for the château de Choisy. The present bureau, decorated with red and black Chinese lacquer with gilt highlights, has scarlet red decoration to the inside of the legs, only seen on his most luxurious pieces; it was probably acquired by the marquis Amable Pierre Thomas de Bérulle for his hôtel, 15 rue de Grenelle built in 1765-66, and passed by descent until the 21st century.
In both line, form and the treatment of the decoration, particularly the distinctive red vernis martin to the reverse of the cabriole legs, this bureau plat can be placed within a clearly identifiable corpus of bureaux plats attributed to Dubois. The first of this group has identical mounts to the present lot and is traditionally thought to have been supplied to Stanislas Leszcyinski, King of Poland. It was sold anonymously at Etude Couturier Nicolay, Paris, 28 March 1990, lot 122. A further related bureau plat with different mounts was sold from the Alexander Collection, Christie’s New York, 30 April 1999, lot 45 and a further two bureaux were sold anonymously at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-5 June 1931, lot 300 and Palais Galliera, Paris, 1-5 March 1973, lot 119.
This bureau and others in the group would have been supplied by marchands-merciers, quite probably in this case Thomas-Joachim Hébert, who particularly specialised in the sale of lacquer-mounted furniture and in 1737 supplied the first ever piece of furniture with this decoration to the Royal family - the commode executed by BVRB for Queen Maria Leszczyinska's use at Fontainebleau in 1737. The mounts of the closely related bureau plat sold from the Alexander Collection are found on a number of pieces supplied by Hébert to the court of Louis XV, for example the celebrated blue vernis Martin commode executed by Matthieu Criaerd (1689-1776) for the chambre bleue of the château de Choisy in 1739, now in the Louvre (OA 11292).
The marquis Amable Pierre Thomas de Bérulle was a member of an ancient noble family whose recent ancestors held the hereditary post of premier président of the Parlement de Grenoble, a role which he too would assume. As a figure of substantial political importance in the French regions, a representative residence in the capital appropriate to this status was required and from 1765 de Bérulle comissioned the architect Pierre-Claude Convers to construct a new hôtel in the fashionable aristocratic district of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Although both the marquis and his son would fall victim to Robespierre’s reign of terror and were guillotined in April 1794, the bureau plat remained with the family into the 21st century.
In both line, form and the treatment of the decoration, particularly the distinctive red vernis martin to the reverse of the cabriole legs, this bureau plat can be placed within a clearly identifiable corpus of bureaux plats attributed to Dubois. The first of this group has identical mounts to the present lot and is traditionally thought to have been supplied to Stanislas Leszcyinski, King of Poland. It was sold anonymously at Etude Couturier Nicolay, Paris, 28 March 1990, lot 122. A further related bureau plat with different mounts was sold from the Alexander Collection, Christie’s New York, 30 April 1999, lot 45 and a further two bureaux were sold anonymously at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-5 June 1931, lot 300 and Palais Galliera, Paris, 1-5 March 1973, lot 119.
This bureau and others in the group would have been supplied by marchands-merciers, quite probably in this case Thomas-Joachim Hébert, who particularly specialised in the sale of lacquer-mounted furniture and in 1737 supplied the first ever piece of furniture with this decoration to the Royal family - the commode executed by BVRB for Queen Maria Leszczyinska's use at Fontainebleau in 1737. The mounts of the closely related bureau plat sold from the Alexander Collection are found on a number of pieces supplied by Hébert to the court of Louis XV, for example the celebrated blue vernis Martin commode executed by Matthieu Criaerd (1689-1776) for the chambre bleue of the château de Choisy in 1739, now in the Louvre (OA 11292).
The marquis Amable Pierre Thomas de Bérulle was a member of an ancient noble family whose recent ancestors held the hereditary post of premier président of the Parlement de Grenoble, a role which he too would assume. As a figure of substantial political importance in the French regions, a representative residence in the capital appropriate to this status was required and from 1765 de Bérulle comissioned the architect Pierre-Claude Convers to construct a new hôtel in the fashionable aristocratic district of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Although both the marquis and his son would fall victim to Robespierre’s reign of terror and were guillotined in April 1794, the bureau plat remained with the family into the 21st century.