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Lot Essay
Jacques-Laurent Cosson, maître in 1765.
The Dubois stamp is presumably that of René Dubois, maître in 1755.
With its Greek key frieze decoration this bureau plat reflects the style introduced in the 1750s by the architect Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1714-1759). Probably working in collaboration with a marchand-mercier such as Simon-Philippe Poirier, Le Lorrain's goût Grec style was first realized in the designs for the celebrated suite of furniture supplied for the Parisian hôtel of the amateur Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully circa 1755, which included the bureau plat and cartonnier now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early neo-classicism in France, London 1974, figs. 85-89.)
René Dubois was the son of the well-known ébéniste Jacques Dubois (1694-1763) at whose death he took over the workshop, continuing to use his father's stamp. He had already become a maîttre-ébéniste in 1755 and obviously worked with his father from then on, presumably introducing a more up-to-date manner in the workshop. The inventory taken at the death of Jacques Dubois lists une table de bois d'amarante à la grecque, which probably describes a table related to the present one or to the well-documented group of bureaux à la grecque by René Dubois and Philippe-Claude Montigny (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, p. 300).
The Dubois stamp is presumably that of René Dubois, maître in 1755.
With its Greek key frieze decoration this bureau plat reflects the style introduced in the 1750s by the architect Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1714-1759). Probably working in collaboration with a marchand-mercier such as Simon-Philippe Poirier, Le Lorrain's goût Grec style was first realized in the designs for the celebrated suite of furniture supplied for the Parisian hôtel of the amateur Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully circa 1755, which included the bureau plat and cartonnier now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early neo-classicism in France, London 1974, figs. 85-89.)
René Dubois was the son of the well-known ébéniste Jacques Dubois (1694-1763) at whose death he took over the workshop, continuing to use his father's stamp. He had already become a maîttre-ébéniste in 1755 and obviously worked with his father from then on, presumably introducing a more up-to-date manner in the workshop. The inventory taken at the death of Jacques Dubois lists une table de bois d'amarante à la grecque, which probably describes a table related to the present one or to the well-documented group of bureaux à la grecque by René Dubois and Philippe-Claude Montigny (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, p. 300).