Lot Essay
This bureau plat, probably born out of a table à jeux, is designed in the strict Neo-Classical style or gôut Grec of the 1760s. This new Parisian style, imported by the English aristocracy, had a profound impact on English taste and inspired the cabinet-maker John Linnell to supply writing-tables that directly copied the celebrated bureaux plats executed in the atelier of René Dubois (such as that sold anonymously at Christie's New York, 19-20 January 1996, lot 303).
Amongst those within the vanguard of this new taste was the 6th Earl of Coventry, who acquired from the marchand-mercier Simon-Phillipe Poirier, 'un bureau à la grec avec deux tablettes qui le tirent sur les côtés' on 12 March 1765. This bureau, still at Croome Court in the late 19th Century, is discussed in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, II, New York, 1959, p. 93.
Several further bureaux of this model, stamped 'I. Dubois' (d. 1763) but attributed to his son René, who employed his father's stamp, are recorded: one is illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London, 1974, fig. 100: another was sold anonymously in Paris, Ader Picard, Tajan, 14 June 1995, lot 114, and another was sold anonymously at Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, lot 163. Finally, a bureau at Temple Newsam, recorded in the inventory of Lady Irwin's Saloon in 1808, is illustrated in Leeds Art Calendar 1987, no. 99 & 100, pp. 17 and 27.
Amongst those within the vanguard of this new taste was the 6th Earl of Coventry, who acquired from the marchand-mercier Simon-Phillipe Poirier, 'un bureau à la grec avec deux tablettes qui le tirent sur les côtés' on 12 March 1765. This bureau, still at Croome Court in the late 19th Century, is discussed in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, II, New York, 1959, p. 93.
Several further bureaux of this model, stamped 'I. Dubois' (d. 1763) but attributed to his son René, who employed his father's stamp, are recorded: one is illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London, 1974, fig. 100: another was sold anonymously in Paris, Ader Picard, Tajan, 14 June 1995, lot 114, and another was sold anonymously at Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, lot 163. Finally, a bureau at Temple Newsam, recorded in the inventory of Lady Irwin's Saloon in 1808, is illustrated in Leeds Art Calendar 1987, no. 99 & 100, pp. 17 and 27.