Lot Essay
Louis Falconet, maître in 9 September 1743, the rue de Cléry, Paris between 1738 and 1750.
The distinctive line of the legs and profile of the arms and seat-rail is clearly inspired by the suite of Régence seat-furniture supplied for the appartements of the Infanta Marie-Anne-Victoire of Spain, the future wife of Louis XV. Upholstered in Gobelins tapestries woven by Duvivier after designs by Antoine Coypel, Claude III Audran, Desportes and Blain de Fontenay, the suite cost 10,000 livres in 1724 and is now in the Rothschild Room of the Israel Museum (Catalogue, 1985, 186.69 a-f). A similar fauteuil is illustrated in J. Nicolay, L'Art et la Manière des Maître Ebénistes Francais au XVIIIe Siècle, 1956, pp. 115 and 179, fig. A. Interestingly, related asymetrical foliate scrolls to the seat-rail, cabriole legs and toprail appear on giltwood fauteuils by Louis Cresson of circa 1755 (B. Pallot, L'Art du Siège au 18ème Siècle en France, Paris, 1987 pp. 150-151).
The distinctive line of the legs and profile of the arms and seat-rail is clearly inspired by the suite of Régence seat-furniture supplied for the appartements of the Infanta Marie-Anne-Victoire of Spain, the future wife of Louis XV. Upholstered in Gobelins tapestries woven by Duvivier after designs by Antoine Coypel, Claude III Audran, Desportes and Blain de Fontenay, the suite cost 10,000 livres in 1724 and is now in the Rothschild Room of the Israel Museum (Catalogue, 1985, 186.69 a-f). A similar fauteuil is illustrated in J. Nicolay, L'Art et la Manière des Maître Ebénistes Francais au XVIIIe Siècle, 1956, pp. 115 and 179, fig. A. Interestingly, related asymetrical foliate scrolls to the seat-rail, cabriole legs and toprail appear on giltwood fauteuils by Louis Cresson of circa 1755 (B. Pallot, L'Art du Siège au 18ème Siècle en France, Paris, 1987 pp. 150-151).