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Lot Essay
Clearly inspired by designs for winged dragons such as featured on the drawing for a console by Bernard Toro (1661-1735), from Toulon, in his Livre de Tables de Diverses Formes published in Paris by C. N. Le pas-Du Buisson in 1716 related winged dragons appear on the cresting of a trumeau from the cabinet d'angle of the Htel Peyrenc de Moras. Constructed in 1723 by the architect Gabriel with the boiseries carved by Jules Degoullons and Andr Legoupil in 1724, these boiseries are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of J. Pierpont Morgan. The heads also relate to those on a console table from the chteau de Chenonceaux, now in the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris, (Chefs d'oeuvre du Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris, 1985, p. 49), the pair to which is in the Toledo Museum.
A closely related console table in the Louvre, which shares the same distinctive shape as well as a number of unusual carved elements, is discussed in B. Pallot, Furniture Collections in the Louvre, vol II, Dijon, 1993, pp. 40-41, no. 7. This latter console is almost certainly by the sculptor Degoullons and his atelier Andr and Mathieu Legoupil, Marin Bellan and Pierre Taupin. Originally supplied to the chteau de Bercy, which was refurbished for Charles-Henri II de Malon under the direction of the architect Jacques de la Gupire, it was purchased at the auction of the furnishings of the chteau in July 1860 by Napoleon III. This last comparison is further strengthened by designs for console tables executed by Mathieu Legoupil circa 1730 (in his notebook now in the Kunstbibliotek, Berlin), fol. 33-35, illustrated in B. Pons, De Paris A Versailles 1699-1736, Strasbourg, 1986, figs. 375, 377, 378.
A closely related console table in the Louvre, which shares the same distinctive shape as well as a number of unusual carved elements, is discussed in B. Pallot, Furniture Collections in the Louvre, vol II, Dijon, 1993, pp. 40-41, no. 7. This latter console is almost certainly by the sculptor Degoullons and his atelier Andr and Mathieu Legoupil, Marin Bellan and Pierre Taupin. Originally supplied to the chteau de Bercy, which was refurbished for Charles-Henri II de Malon under the direction of the architect Jacques de la Gupire, it was purchased at the auction of the furnishings of the chteau in July 1860 by Napoleon III. This last comparison is further strengthened by designs for console tables executed by Mathieu Legoupil circa 1730 (in his notebook now in the Kunstbibliotek, Berlin), fol. 33-35, illustrated in B. Pons, De Paris A Versailles 1699-1736, Strasbourg, 1986, figs. 375, 377, 378.