Lot Essay
Bernard Molitor, maître in 1787.
The cheval-glass, first referred to by the French name 'miroir à la Psyche' around 1809, was named after the maiden who was the love of Cupid and an attendant at the the Toilet of Venus, goddess of beauty. This type of rectangular mirror-frame, with Roman temple pediment and candelabra supports, was introduced in the late 18th Century. However, with its rectangular Roman pillars, capped by bronze cassolettes and Grecian-scrolled claws terminating in Bacchic lion-paws and palms, it relates to a mirror illustrated in an engraving issued in 1800 by Jean Fulchram Harriet and entitled 'La Toilette' (B. Doering, Pompeji an der Alster, Hamburg, 1995, fig.101). A pattern for this form of dressing-mirror, with additional bronze enrichments, was issued in P.A. La Messangère's Collection de Meubles et Objets de Gôut, 1807 (pl.152), when it was called by its earlier name 'écran de toilette'. Its robust style reflects in particular the fashion adopted by Napoléon Bonaparte when, as First Consul, he commissioned Bernard Molitor to supply furniture for the château de Saint-Cloud. This style is further seen on a writing-cabinet of this period attributed to Molitor in U. Leben et al., Bernard Molitor, Luxembourg, 1995, p.95, no.39, as well as on the related cheval-glass illustrated in U. Leben, 'Bernard Molitor', Thesis, Bonn, 1989, p.358, tafel 148.
The cheval-glass, first referred to by the French name 'miroir à la Psyche' around 1809, was named after the maiden who was the love of Cupid and an attendant at the the Toilet of Venus, goddess of beauty. This type of rectangular mirror-frame, with Roman temple pediment and candelabra supports, was introduced in the late 18th Century. However, with its rectangular Roman pillars, capped by bronze cassolettes and Grecian-scrolled claws terminating in Bacchic lion-paws and palms, it relates to a mirror illustrated in an engraving issued in 1800 by Jean Fulchram Harriet and entitled 'La Toilette' (B. Doering, Pompeji an der Alster, Hamburg, 1995, fig.101). A pattern for this form of dressing-mirror, with additional bronze enrichments, was issued in P.A. La Messangère's Collection de Meubles et Objets de Gôut, 1807 (pl.152), when it was called by its earlier name 'écran de toilette'. Its robust style reflects in particular the fashion adopted by Napoléon Bonaparte when, as First Consul, he commissioned Bernard Molitor to supply furniture for the château de Saint-Cloud. This style is further seen on a writing-cabinet of this period attributed to Molitor in U. Leben et al., Bernard Molitor, Luxembourg, 1995, p.95, no.39, as well as on the related cheval-glass illustrated in U. Leben, 'Bernard Molitor', Thesis, Bonn, 1989, p.358, tafel 148.