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Lot Essay
This magnificent ‘secrétaire à l’antique’, with its striking large-scale parquetry executed with dazzling precision flanked by sculptural bronzes of Vestal Virgins, is a masterpiece of the Neoclassical style by the cabinetmaker Martin Carlin. It also has a remarkably rich and well-documented history, having been supplied originally to the duc de Penthièvre, one of the wealthiest men in France and the illegitimate grandson of Louis XIV, for the hôtel de Toulouse, and restituted after the Revolution to his daughter, the duchesse d’Orléans, being subsequently placed in the Royal palace of château d’Eu.
THE HISTORY
The secrétaire is first recorded in an inventory taken after Penthièvre’s death in 1793, still in the salon bleu of the hôtel de Toulouse, where it is succinctly described as un secrétaire en bois de marqueterie orné de bronze et rainures dorés d’or moulu et à bascule, garni de son coffre-fort et de son dessus de marbre blanc, prisé avec une pendule en cartel et à tirage par Dutertre à 350 livres. This description alone would not be sufficient to identify this as the superb secrétaire offered here, but further evidence to support this theory can be gleaned through analyzing other marks on the secrétaire, and by tracing its later history. Following the death of Penthièvre in 1793, his daughter Marie-Adélaïde de Bourbon Penthièvre, duchesse douairière d'Orléans, newly separated from her husband Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans, (known as Philippe Egalité), was forced to go into exile. She eventually returned with the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, when by decree of her cousin, Louis XVIII, her goods and fortune were restituted to her from the state collections, his edict declaring: ‘tous les biens appartenant à notre très chère et bien aimée cousine, la duchesse d'Orléans, qui n'ont pas été vendus, soit qu'ils soient régis par l'Administration de notre Domaine, soit qu'ils soient employées à des établissements publics, lui seront rendus.’ Unable to return to her two family residences in Paris, the palais Royal, where her son, the future King Louis-Philippe, lived, and the hôtel de Toulouse, which by then was owned by the state, she purchased from Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès the hôtel de Roquelaure on the rue Saint Dominique, along with all its contents, which had previously furnished the hôtel d’Elbeuf. Her father's secrétaire, however, was not listed among these furnishings and was possibly obtained directly from the hôtel de Toulouse by the duchesse. Following her death in 1821 it was listed in her bedroom in the hôtel de Roquelaure where it was described as: Un secrétaire à abattant et deux vantaux en bois de rose et marqueterie, avec ornements et figures cariatides en cuivre doré, le dessus de marbre blanc, 180 frs.
The collection of the duchesse was divided between her daughter Eugène-Adélaïde d'Orléans, known as Madame Adélaïde (1777-1847), and her son, the future King Louis-Philippe. In 1824 a portion of the collection was stored temporarily in the palais Royal before being transported to the château d’Eu. When the contents of the shipment were listed, under ‘Caisse n°16’ was described ‘Un secrétaire à l’antique venant de M. le duc de Penthièvre et dans la Caisse n°42 : Le marbre du secrétaire à l'antique de la caisse n°16’. This perfectly corresponds to the inscription under the marble on the present lot: ‘Marbre du secrétaire à l'antique de la caisse n°16’, identifying it as the same secrétaire that came from Penthièvre’s collection. Further evidence tying it specifically to the hôtel de Toulouse is that Penthièvre’s Parisian hôtel was alone among all his residences not to employ his distinctive inventory brand, with the sign of an anchor—an allusion to his position as the grand amiral de France—a brand which does not appear on this secrétaire.
The secrétaire is next recorded in an 1841 inventory at château d’Eu, when it was described in the boudoir of Madame Adélaïde, under inventory number 1070, as ‘Un secrétaire en marqueterie, forme antique, pilastres surmontés de figures, dessus en marbre blanc, 1000 frs’. The secrétaire then eventually descended to her great-grandson, Emmanuel d'Orléans, duc de Vendôme et d'Alençon (1872-1931), appearing on the market for the very first time following his death.
THE DUC DE PENTHIEVRE AND THE HOTEL DE TOULOUSE
Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre (1725-1793) was the only son of Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse (1678-1737), the legitimized son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, and his wife Marie-Victoire de Noailles, daughter Anne-Jules de Noailles, second duc de Noailles (1650-1708). Penthièvre inherited enormous fortunes from both the Toulouse and Noailles sides of his family, amassing a staggering array of residences including the châteaux de Chanteloup, d’Amboise, Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and Sceaux. The hôtel de Toulouse was originally built by François Mansart for Louis Phélypeaux de la Vrillière, comte de Saint-Florentin. Situated on a sprawling plot between the rue de la Vrillière and the rue Croix des Petits Champs, and now the site of the Banque de France, it was one of the grandest hôtels in Paris. Acquired by the comte de Toulouse in 1713, it was left to his son following his death in 1737.
Penthièvre renovated the hôtel in 1752, adding two new courtyards and separate apartments for himself and the duchesse. Within his apartment, in a later furnishing phase, he created a salon bleu looking onto the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. It was hung à la turque with blue and white damask curtains and wall coverings, while a suite of mobilier was similarly covered. The Carlin secrétaire must have possessed and eye-catching impact, as the only piece of cabinetry in the room.
THE MODEL
Born near Freiburg in Breisgau, Martin Carlin (circa 1730-1785) was among the hundreds of young German cabinetmakers who migrated to Paris in the eighteenth century to practice their craft. Although he gained membership in the guild of ébénistes in 1766 and maintained his own workshop, he is most famous for his masterful production in the ateliers of others, including Jean-Francois Oeben, whose workshop in the Grand Arsenal stood next-door to Carlin’s own home, and whose sister, Marie-Catherine Oeben, married Carlin in 1759. Carlin is renowned for his close collaborations with prominent marchand-merciers, most famously Dominique Daguerre, who may have held something of a sponsor relationship to the cabinetmaker.
Carlin’s technical mastery is apparent in numerous precise and sophisticated details throughout the secrétaire. Its sides are covered in trellis parquetry of deceptive complexity, with its rosewood latticework delineated in stringing that displays a subtle trompe-l’oeil effect evoking light and shadow. The large rosewood quatrefoils are set apart from the dyed sycamore ground by filets of boxwood and ebony, with the consistent placement of these light and dark woods on alternating sides of the rosewood straps creating the illusion of three-dimensionality. In a remarkable feat of parquetry, Carlin splits the delineating filets into two at the curved sections where real lattice would transition from light into shadow. At these curved sections, strings of both boxwood and ebony taper and overlap, so that the light line is taken up by the dark line. The fleurons enclosed in the quatrefoils are equally intricate, with each elongated petal composed of two rosewood sections laid cross-grain to one another, spaced by amaranth stems issuing rosewood florets, all joined by light boxwood circles. Finally, concealed within the secrétaire's hollow sides is a system of counterweights ensuring smooth and gentle operation of its fall-front, a sophisticated element appearing only in secrétaires of the highest luxury.
The most strikingly Neoclassical elements of the secrétaire are the term-columns at its corners with ormolu capitals as busts of Vestal virgins. This device appears on two other secrétaires, a table and a number of commodes in Carlin’s oeuvre, as well as in furniture from the workshop of Oeben and Jean-Henri Riesener. The first of the secrétaires by Carlin was sold from the collection of Mrs. Richard Wallace at Galerie Charpentier, Paris, December 17, 1949, and the second formed part of the collection of the Galerie Fabre in Paris, and is illustrated in A. Pradere, Les Ébénistes Français, Paris, 1989, p. 347, fig. 406. Although the three secrétaires are quite similar in form, the duc de Penthievre’s secrétaire stands apart from the others in the drama of its large-scale quatrefoil trellis parquetry, which Carlin takes care to repeat on the tapering shafts of the terms, in contrast to the trailing flowers that decorate each of these areas on the other two pieces.
Carlin also employs the term-pillar device on two commodes and a console table. The first of these is the commode owned by the Earls of Mansfield and Mansfield, Scone Palace, sold Sotheby's, London, December 8, 1967, lot 142, subsequently resold from the Collection of Akram Ojjeh, Sotheby's, Monaco, June 25-26, 1979, lot 50, and again resold from the Collection of Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, Monaco, December 6, 1985, lot 54. The second is a near-pair to the Mansfield commode, and was sold from the Riahi Collection, Christie’s, London, 6 December 2012, lot 5. The console table, also in the Riahi Collection, was sold Christie’s, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 29. Interestingly, the Mansfield commode is inscribed Poirier Md Rue St Honore a Paris, raising the possibility that Simon-Philippe Poirier (c. 1720-1785), the marchand-mercier to whom Carlin supplied approximately one-third of his production in the years 1766-1778, may have supplied the present secrétaire to the duc de Penthièvre as well.
Oeben’s stamp appears five times and Riesener’s stamp appears once on a secrétaire from the Collection of Lord Wernher at Luton Hoo, sold Christie's, London, July 5, 2000, lot 73, whose corner terms are mounted with an ormolu bust of Hercules and a variant model of a Vestal. This may be one of the earliest examples to employ this corner-term device, as the presence of both signatures dates it to the years 1763-1768. Riesener later employed angle mounts of an identical model to those on the present piece, including on a secrétaire, circa 1775, today preserved in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva (inv. AD 6919). The two ébénistes Carlin and Riesener both employed the fondeur André Ravrio, and this may offer a possibility as to the author of these chutes.
THE HISTORY
The secrétaire is first recorded in an inventory taken after Penthièvre’s death in 1793, still in the salon bleu of the hôtel de Toulouse, where it is succinctly described as un secrétaire en bois de marqueterie orné de bronze et rainures dorés d’or moulu et à bascule, garni de son coffre-fort et de son dessus de marbre blanc, prisé avec une pendule en cartel et à tirage par Dutertre à 350 livres. This description alone would not be sufficient to identify this as the superb secrétaire offered here, but further evidence to support this theory can be gleaned through analyzing other marks on the secrétaire, and by tracing its later history. Following the death of Penthièvre in 1793, his daughter Marie-Adélaïde de Bourbon Penthièvre, duchesse douairière d'Orléans, newly separated from her husband Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans, (known as Philippe Egalité), was forced to go into exile. She eventually returned with the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, when by decree of her cousin, Louis XVIII, her goods and fortune were restituted to her from the state collections, his edict declaring: ‘tous les biens appartenant à notre très chère et bien aimée cousine, la duchesse d'Orléans, qui n'ont pas été vendus, soit qu'ils soient régis par l'Administration de notre Domaine, soit qu'ils soient employées à des établissements publics, lui seront rendus.’ Unable to return to her two family residences in Paris, the palais Royal, where her son, the future King Louis-Philippe, lived, and the hôtel de Toulouse, which by then was owned by the state, she purchased from Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès the hôtel de Roquelaure on the rue Saint Dominique, along with all its contents, which had previously furnished the hôtel d’Elbeuf. Her father's secrétaire, however, was not listed among these furnishings and was possibly obtained directly from the hôtel de Toulouse by the duchesse. Following her death in 1821 it was listed in her bedroom in the hôtel de Roquelaure where it was described as: Un secrétaire à abattant et deux vantaux en bois de rose et marqueterie, avec ornements et figures cariatides en cuivre doré, le dessus de marbre blanc, 180 frs.
The collection of the duchesse was divided between her daughter Eugène-Adélaïde d'Orléans, known as Madame Adélaïde (1777-1847), and her son, the future King Louis-Philippe. In 1824 a portion of the collection was stored temporarily in the palais Royal before being transported to the château d’Eu. When the contents of the shipment were listed, under ‘Caisse n°16’ was described ‘Un secrétaire à l’antique venant de M. le duc de Penthièvre et dans la Caisse n°42 : Le marbre du secrétaire à l'antique de la caisse n°16’. This perfectly corresponds to the inscription under the marble on the present lot: ‘Marbre du secrétaire à l'antique de la caisse n°16’, identifying it as the same secrétaire that came from Penthièvre’s collection. Further evidence tying it specifically to the hôtel de Toulouse is that Penthièvre’s Parisian hôtel was alone among all his residences not to employ his distinctive inventory brand, with the sign of an anchor—an allusion to his position as the grand amiral de France—a brand which does not appear on this secrétaire.
The secrétaire is next recorded in an 1841 inventory at château d’Eu, when it was described in the boudoir of Madame Adélaïde, under inventory number 1070, as ‘Un secrétaire en marqueterie, forme antique, pilastres surmontés de figures, dessus en marbre blanc, 1000 frs’. The secrétaire then eventually descended to her great-grandson, Emmanuel d'Orléans, duc de Vendôme et d'Alençon (1872-1931), appearing on the market for the very first time following his death.
THE DUC DE PENTHIEVRE AND THE HOTEL DE TOULOUSE
Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre (1725-1793) was the only son of Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse (1678-1737), the legitimized son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, and his wife Marie-Victoire de Noailles, daughter Anne-Jules de Noailles, second duc de Noailles (1650-1708). Penthièvre inherited enormous fortunes from both the Toulouse and Noailles sides of his family, amassing a staggering array of residences including the châteaux de Chanteloup, d’Amboise, Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and Sceaux. The hôtel de Toulouse was originally built by François Mansart for Louis Phélypeaux de la Vrillière, comte de Saint-Florentin. Situated on a sprawling plot between the rue de la Vrillière and the rue Croix des Petits Champs, and now the site of the Banque de France, it was one of the grandest hôtels in Paris. Acquired by the comte de Toulouse in 1713, it was left to his son following his death in 1737.
Penthièvre renovated the hôtel in 1752, adding two new courtyards and separate apartments for himself and the duchesse. Within his apartment, in a later furnishing phase, he created a salon bleu looking onto the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. It was hung à la turque with blue and white damask curtains and wall coverings, while a suite of mobilier was similarly covered. The Carlin secrétaire must have possessed and eye-catching impact, as the only piece of cabinetry in the room.
THE MODEL
Born near Freiburg in Breisgau, Martin Carlin (circa 1730-1785) was among the hundreds of young German cabinetmakers who migrated to Paris in the eighteenth century to practice their craft. Although he gained membership in the guild of ébénistes in 1766 and maintained his own workshop, he is most famous for his masterful production in the ateliers of others, including Jean-Francois Oeben, whose workshop in the Grand Arsenal stood next-door to Carlin’s own home, and whose sister, Marie-Catherine Oeben, married Carlin in 1759. Carlin is renowned for his close collaborations with prominent marchand-merciers, most famously Dominique Daguerre, who may have held something of a sponsor relationship to the cabinetmaker.
Carlin’s technical mastery is apparent in numerous precise and sophisticated details throughout the secrétaire. Its sides are covered in trellis parquetry of deceptive complexity, with its rosewood latticework delineated in stringing that displays a subtle trompe-l’oeil effect evoking light and shadow. The large rosewood quatrefoils are set apart from the dyed sycamore ground by filets of boxwood and ebony, with the consistent placement of these light and dark woods on alternating sides of the rosewood straps creating the illusion of three-dimensionality. In a remarkable feat of parquetry, Carlin splits the delineating filets into two at the curved sections where real lattice would transition from light into shadow. At these curved sections, strings of both boxwood and ebony taper and overlap, so that the light line is taken up by the dark line. The fleurons enclosed in the quatrefoils are equally intricate, with each elongated petal composed of two rosewood sections laid cross-grain to one another, spaced by amaranth stems issuing rosewood florets, all joined by light boxwood circles. Finally, concealed within the secrétaire's hollow sides is a system of counterweights ensuring smooth and gentle operation of its fall-front, a sophisticated element appearing only in secrétaires of the highest luxury.
The most strikingly Neoclassical elements of the secrétaire are the term-columns at its corners with ormolu capitals as busts of Vestal virgins. This device appears on two other secrétaires, a table and a number of commodes in Carlin’s oeuvre, as well as in furniture from the workshop of Oeben and Jean-Henri Riesener. The first of the secrétaires by Carlin was sold from the collection of Mrs. Richard Wallace at Galerie Charpentier, Paris, December 17, 1949, and the second formed part of the collection of the Galerie Fabre in Paris, and is illustrated in A. Pradere, Les Ébénistes Français, Paris, 1989, p. 347, fig. 406. Although the three secrétaires are quite similar in form, the duc de Penthievre’s secrétaire stands apart from the others in the drama of its large-scale quatrefoil trellis parquetry, which Carlin takes care to repeat on the tapering shafts of the terms, in contrast to the trailing flowers that decorate each of these areas on the other two pieces.
Carlin also employs the term-pillar device on two commodes and a console table. The first of these is the commode owned by the Earls of Mansfield and Mansfield, Scone Palace, sold Sotheby's, London, December 8, 1967, lot 142, subsequently resold from the Collection of Akram Ojjeh, Sotheby's, Monaco, June 25-26, 1979, lot 50, and again resold from the Collection of Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, Monaco, December 6, 1985, lot 54. The second is a near-pair to the Mansfield commode, and was sold from the Riahi Collection, Christie’s, London, 6 December 2012, lot 5. The console table, also in the Riahi Collection, was sold Christie’s, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 29. Interestingly, the Mansfield commode is inscribed Poirier Md Rue St Honore a Paris, raising the possibility that Simon-Philippe Poirier (c. 1720-1785), the marchand-mercier to whom Carlin supplied approximately one-third of his production in the years 1766-1778, may have supplied the present secrétaire to the duc de Penthièvre as well.
Oeben’s stamp appears five times and Riesener’s stamp appears once on a secrétaire from the Collection of Lord Wernher at Luton Hoo, sold Christie's, London, July 5, 2000, lot 73, whose corner terms are mounted with an ormolu bust of Hercules and a variant model of a Vestal. This may be one of the earliest examples to employ this corner-term device, as the presence of both signatures dates it to the years 1763-1768. Riesener later employed angle mounts of an identical model to those on the present piece, including on a secrétaire, circa 1775, today preserved in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva (inv. AD 6919). The two ébénistes Carlin and Riesener both employed the fondeur André Ravrio, and this may offer a possibility as to the author of these chutes.