A REGENCE ORMOLU-MOUNTED BRASS-INLAID EBONY AND TORTOISESHELL BUREAU PLAT by André-Charles Boulle

The Property of THE TRUSTEES OF BARONESS LUCAS AND DINGWALL'S TRUST

Details

A REGENCE ORMOLU-MOUNTED BRASS-INLAID EBONY AND TORTOISESHELL BUREAU PLAT by André-Charles Boulle

Decorated in première-partie and inlaid with foliate scrolls and strapwork, the rounded rectangular black leather-lined top embossed with scallop-shells and foliate strapwork and with foliate rockwork angles, the moulded rim with pounced border and acanthus-cast corner mounts with paterae, the waved frieze with two walnut-lined shaped drawers to the front flanked by a larger recessed drawer with ribbon-tied palm-frond medallion escutcheon, each with moulded ormolu border and flanked by acanthus-scroll gadrooned mounts, the back with identical decoration and with simulated drawers, the sides each centred by a satyr-mask within a shaped moulded frame centred by acanthus, the angles with female espagnolette mounts with plaits to the front, decorated with lozenges and a patera, flanked by gadrooned acanthus scrolls, on cabriole legs and hairy claw-and-ball sabots headed by acanthus, the base stencilled twice 250 and with fragment of printed label Depositories, /..URNEMOUTH WEST, the interior with printed label Allens' Depositories, Ltd./WYFOLD ROAD, FULHAM/ inscribed MRS. A. R. PALMER/No.2, one drawer stencilled E250, one side mount with small section lacking, lacking finials to sides
71in. (180.25cm.) wide; 31½in. (80cm.) high; 37in. (94cm.) deep

Provenance

Almost certainly acquired by Thomas, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781-1859) for Wrest Park, Bedfordshire
By descent through his daughter Anne, wife of George, 6th Earl Cowper (d. 1856) to the Cowper Collection at Panshanger, Hertfordshire
Thence by descent

André-Charles Boulle, appointed ébéniste du Roi in 1672

THOMAS, 2ND EARL DE GREY

This bureau plat was almost certainly acquired by Thomas Philip Weddell, 5th Baron Lucas, 3rd Lord Grantham and later 2nd Earl de Grey (1741-1859) for Wrest Park, Hertfordshire. A celebrated Francophile and amateur architect, while at Paris some years before' de Grey 'had paid a good deal of attention to small pavilions or buildings in Gardens with a view to Lodges or Park Gates at Wrest' and as early as 1826 he had designed new entrance lodges on the estate in the French manner. On inheriting Wrest from his aunt in 1833, however, de Grey embarked upon a comprehensive rebuilding programme. Acting as architect himself, with the assistance of James Clephane, he razed Giacomo Leoni's earlier house to the ground, although retaining the celebrated garden pavilion designed by Thomas Archer . Armed with the inspirational architectural treatises of J. Courtonne, Le Blond, Le Roux, Blondel and L'Assurance he proceeded to design an early Louis XV hôtel in the English countryside, completed in 1839 at a cost of #92,832 35 8d.

As the letter to his son so tellingly reveals (Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, vol. 59, no. 1980, pp. 65-85), the mansion was a comprehensive essay in Francophile taste. The tapestry room, for instance, was originally to be hung with the Gobelins suite from his house at Newby, acquired by his cousin William Weddell in Paris circa 1765-6, before protracted negotiations for Lord Dundas's similar Gobelins tapestries at Arlington Street were pursued. These ultimately came to nothing, and in the end de Grey commissioned a suite of hangings from the Beauvais factory, after his own designs, which were ordered through Monsieur Salandrouze. The boudoir was painted with medallions 'of Watteau-like figures, as like a Sevres cup as we could make them', while the doors for the saloon re-used some 'French wainscotting bought for George IV for Windsor Castle by Mr Walsh Porter'

De Grey's goût was very much in the vanguard of the revival of interest in Buhl furniture and French taste promoted by George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. It is, therefore, extremely interesting that de Grey mentions 'the other four vases I bought off Baldock' in his epistle. The marchand-mercier Edward Holmes Baldock (d. 1854), Purveyor of China, Earthenware and Glass to William IV (1832-7) and Purveyor of China to Queen Victoria (1838-45), was responsible for the formation of many of the greatest early 19th Century collections of French furniture including, other than that of George IV, those of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Northumberland, William Beckford and George Byng. The predominance of Buhl furniture in the de Grey Collections at both Wrest and Newby Hall, Yorkshire, may well point to the assistance of Baldock

However, the numerous references to trips to Paris in the 1820s and 1830s, as well as the fact that Lady de Grey was foremost amongst those who provided for the destitute duchesse's de Berri and Angoulême following the 1830 Revolution, combined with his opportunistic approach as an amateur, architect and designer, shows that he was more than capable of acquiring supreme objets and furniture alone. Certainly the collections of Buhl at both Wrest and Newby Hall confirm an unerring and discerning eye. It included no less than two commodes (tables en bureau) by Boulle (one still remains at Newby, the other was sold by Rosemary, Lady Ravensdale, in these Rooms 22 June 1989, lot 108), a Boulle side table (illustrated in situ in the Great Gallery at Panshanger in 'Panshanger, Hertfordshire II', Country Life, 18 January 1936, p. 64), two Louis XIV meubles d'appui still at Newby and a similar Boulle bureau plat, untraced, illustrated in the Grand Library in the particulars of the 'Sale of Wrest Mansion', 1917. Wrest contained no less than three libraries, and the 1917 photograph shows three French bureaux plats in the Great Library alone! What is even more relevant is that the closely related contre-partie bureau plat from Fountains Abbey (listed below, (9)), was sold by a direct descendant of Earl de Grey and almost certainly formed part of his collection

While Newby Hall was given by Earl de Grey to his daughter Mary, the wife of Henry Vyner, Wrest was inherited by his eldest daughter, Anne, who became Baroness Lucas in her own right (d. 1880). Through her marriage to George, 6th Earl Cowper (d. 1856), Wrest Park passed into the Cowper family of Panshanger, Hertfordshire and, following the sale of Wrest in 1917, the princely collection, including the Lucas bureau plat and the Ravensdale commode (table en bureau), was installed in the house designed by William Atkinson (d. 1839) at Panshanger

Lot Essay

BOULLE'S BUREAUX PLATS

First conceived in 1684 by Furretière as

une table garnie de quelque tiroirs ou tablettes ou les gens d'affaires ou d'étude écrivent et mettent leurs papiers,

the bureaux plats of André-Charles Boulle began to appear circa 1710. The first recorded bureau plat is that listed in the inventory of the grand marchand Paul Verani in 1713. By 1720 Boulle's workshops were engaged in producing several bureaux plats. The list of items destroyed in the fire of 1720 records:-

(Ouvrages de Commande Brûlé et Péris)
cinq bueaux de cinq à six pieds de long de marqueterie d'écaille de tortue et de cuivre, et deux de bois de couleur très avancés

(Ouvrages qui ne sont Point de Commande, Brûlé et Péris)
douze bureaux de six pieds de long plus ou moins avancés

(Ouvrages Sauvés Appartenant au duc de Bourbon)
un bureau de six pieds de long couvert en maroquini

The duc de Bourbon's bureau plat, virtually identical to the Lucas example and representing the culmination of the bureau Boulle, is now conserved in the château de Versailles

This bureau plat is closely related to two designs:- one, in red chalk and now in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, is inscribed Oppenordt, while the other, alternatively attributed to either Boulle or Oppenordt, is in the musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. As T. Dell concludes in The Frick Collection,V,Furniture, New York, 1992, p.208, the existence of the 'Oppenordt' drawing may leave the attribution to Boulle of the closely related group open to question

This bureau plat belongs to the celebrated group executed in the Boulle workshops between 1710-25, all of identical form but with distinct variations in the design of the angle mounts. Those with satyr-mask angles include a pair of bureaux plats in the Wallace Collection (F427), another in the Getty Museum (85.DA.23) and a further example in the Frick Collection (see A. Pradère, French Furniture Makers, London, 1989, p. 102, nos. 78-85 for the complete list). Those with female-mask angles are listed below:

(1) Delivered to the duc de Bourbon by Boulle in 1720, now in the Musée de Versailles

(2) Delivered to Machault d'Arnouville circa 1719, sold with its cartonnier from the estate of Wendell Cherry at Sotheby's New York, 20 May 1994, lot 80

(3) The collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle

(4) The collection of the Earls of Warwick, sold anonymously at Christie's New York, 18 May 1989, lot 93

(5) The collection of the duchesse de Talleyrand, with a Boulle top, sold anonymously at Sotheby's Monaco, 4 March 1989, lot 268

(6) The Jaime Ortiz Patiño Collection, sold at Sotheby's New York, 20 May 1992, lot 59

(7) With a cartonnier, previously in the Foulc Collection in the 19th Century and consequently recorded in the Wildenstein Collection, illustrated in Molinier, Les Arts appliqués à l'industrie, p. 69

(8) An English collection, sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 24 June 1988, lot 74

(9) En contre-partie and previously from Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, sold by Commander Clare Vyner in these Rooms, 19 May 1966, lot 15

(10) The collection of the duc de Grammont, illustrated in Connaissance des Arts, November 1963

(11) With cockerel's head escutcheons, in a Parisian private collection

(12) En contre-partie and with a cartonnier surmounted by a clock with a sleeping figure of Time, sold in Paris, 23 May 1924, lot 133

Female angle-mounts were first employed by Boulle on the celebrated pair of Commodes Mazzarines supplied in 1708 for the bedchamber of Louis XIV at the Grand Trianon, and their enduring popularity is reflected in the 'chinois' female angle mounts of very similar design, employed as late as 1720-32 on the duchesse de Talleyrand bureau plat

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