Lot Essay
Jacques-Louis Arault (recorded in Paris and Versailles circa 1742-80), was gunmaker to the Dauphin (later King Louis XVI), and subsequently to his brother, the Comte d'Artois. Arault is the maker of a superb gold-inlaid fowling-piece with chiselled steel mounts in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (inv. no. W 2890), illustrated in J.F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. II, plates 11a, b