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Lot Essay
Although unstamped, this table à écrire can probably be attributed to Roger van der Cruse, dit Lacroix (maître in 1755). Through his marriage to Jeanne Prograin in 1750, RVLC became the brother-in-law of the ébéniste Jean-François Oeben (maître in 1761) and the close stylistic affinities between their oeuvres suggests that the two frequently collaborated. In the design of the top, with its stylised cartouche and foliate tendrils, the Wildenstein table is clearly indebted to Oeben and relates, for instance, to two tables mécaniques by the latter in the Louvre (D. Alcouffe et al., Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Dijon, 1993, vol. I, no. 53, pp. 176-179 and no. 54, pp. 180-2). A further related table also in the Louvre (no. 86, p. 268), supplied by the fournisseur de la Cour Gilles Joubert on 4 September 1770 in a retardataire style for Madame Victoire's use at Fontainebleau, was interestingly, probably subcontracted by Joubert to RVLC.
Belonging, therefore, to a group of tables traditionally associated with Oeben - including two further examples illustrated in A. Boutémy, Meubles Français Anonymes du XVIIIe Siècle, Brussels, 1973, nos. 116-7 - the distinctive lozenge parquetry employed on the top of the Wildenstein table appears on several documented pieces of furniture by RVLC. These include the table à écrire sold from the collection of François Guérault in Paris, 21-22 March 1935, lot 86; the table à la Bourgogne in the museé Nissim de Camondo, Paris (Catalogue, Paris, n.d., no. 345); and the bureau plat delivered by Jean-François Oeben on 14 June 1756 for the Bibliothèque of the Dauphin at Versailles, which is now in the musée National du château de Versailles et les Trianons (inv. no. 5295; illustrated in the Revue du Louvre, May, 1990). Many of the same motifs - as well as the same escutcheons - are shared on the table attributed to RVLC sold from the Collections of the Viennese Rothschilds, Christie's London, 8 July 1999, lot 202 (£188,500).
Belonging, therefore, to a group of tables traditionally associated with Oeben - including two further examples illustrated in A. Boutémy, Meubles Français Anonymes du XVIIIe Siècle, Brussels, 1973, nos. 116-7 - the distinctive lozenge parquetry employed on the top of the Wildenstein table appears on several documented pieces of furniture by RVLC. These include the table à écrire sold from the collection of François Guérault in Paris, 21-22 March 1935, lot 86; the table à la Bourgogne in the museé Nissim de Camondo, Paris (Catalogue, Paris, n.d., no. 345); and the bureau plat delivered by Jean-François Oeben on 14 June 1756 for the Bibliothèque of the Dauphin at Versailles, which is now in the musée National du château de Versailles et les Trianons (inv. no. 5295; illustrated in the Revue du Louvre, May, 1990). Many of the same motifs - as well as the same escutcheons - are shared on the table attributed to RVLC sold from the Collections of the Viennese Rothschilds, Christie's London, 8 July 1999, lot 202 (£188,500).