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拍品专文
These richly-carved armchairs, along with the pair of side chairs in the following lot are of the same suite as two chaises and two fauteuils in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, illustrated in C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts: an Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, p. 64, no. 93. Despite variations in the detailing of the carving between the armchairs and the side chairs of this celebrated suite, particularly in the treatment of the cresting and seat-rail cartouches and in the foliate-carved shoulders of the armchairs versus the floral-carving on the side chairs, they have always been considered to be from the same set. At this early stage, pronounced differences in carving between chairs and armchairs in a single set was perfectly normal and would not have been viewed as unusual - and both the Getty and Alexander chairs are reputed to have been in the same English private collection since the eighteenth Century.
The design of the side chairs from this suite owes much to the oeuvre of Juste-Aurle Meissonnier, one of the preeminent designers of the Rococo period. This is particularly apparent in the design for a chair seen in a drawing for a doorway for the Baronness de Bezenval, wife of the Ambassador to the Polish court from 1719 to 1721, which was engraved by Huquier and illustrated in D. Nyberg, L'Oeuvre de Juste-Aurle Meissonnier, New York, 1969, folio 49. The armchairs also bear striking similarity to a Meissonnier design for a pair of armchairs flanking a trumeau, designed for an anonymous Portuguese patron (ibid, folio 50).
B.G.B. Pallot compares this model stylistically to chairs by the celebrated menuisier Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot ( matre in 1729), chiefly in the crowning of the central shell on the crest-rail of the armchair and the overall treatment of the carved shells. He also notes the distinctive framing of the chassis upholstery, in imitation of gilded upholstery nails (B.G.B. Pallot, L'Art du Sige au XVIIIe Sicle en France, 1987, Paris, p. 102). Foliot was one of the foremost menuisiers of the Louis XV period and from an early stage in his career was a fournisseur attitr du Garde-Meuble Royal. He supplied seat-furniture to Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Mme du Barry, the comte d'Artois and the duc de Penthivre, while the celebrated fauteuils supplied to Louis XV's daughter, Madame Elizabeth, duchesse de Parme, among the most richly decorated examples of seat- furniture of the period, are also attributed to his workshop (Pallot op. cit., pp. 142-6).
The design of the side chairs from this suite owes much to the oeuvre of Juste-Aurle Meissonnier, one of the preeminent designers of the Rococo period. This is particularly apparent in the design for a chair seen in a drawing for a doorway for the Baronness de Bezenval, wife of the Ambassador to the Polish court from 1719 to 1721, which was engraved by Huquier and illustrated in D. Nyberg, L'Oeuvre de Juste-Aurle Meissonnier, New York, 1969, folio 49. The armchairs also bear striking similarity to a Meissonnier design for a pair of armchairs flanking a trumeau, designed for an anonymous Portuguese patron (ibid, folio 50).
B.G.B. Pallot compares this model stylistically to chairs by the celebrated menuisier Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot ( matre in 1729), chiefly in the crowning of the central shell on the crest-rail of the armchair and the overall treatment of the carved shells. He also notes the distinctive framing of the chassis upholstery, in imitation of gilded upholstery nails (B.G.B. Pallot, L'Art du Sige au XVIIIe Sicle en France, 1987, Paris, p. 102). Foliot was one of the foremost menuisiers of the Louis XV period and from an early stage in his career was a fournisseur attitr du Garde-Meuble Royal. He supplied seat-furniture to Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Mme du Barry, the comte d'Artois and the duc de Penthivre, while the celebrated fauteuils supplied to Louis XV's daughter, Madame Elizabeth, duchesse de Parme, among the most richly decorated examples of seat- furniture of the period, are also attributed to his workshop (Pallot op. cit., pp. 142-6).