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Lot Essay
The elegantly serpentined commode is richly inlaid in the French fashion promoted in London from the late 1750s by cabinet-makers such as Pierre Langlois (d. 1767) of Tottenham Court Road. Its mosaiced top evokes Rome's Temple of Venus with its ray-lozenged parquetry tablet enclosing a marquetry medallion, and the latter comprises a laurel-wreathed trophy of musical instruments. This pastoral trophy celebrates lyric poetry and comprises a music-book with guitar and other instruments tied amongst myrtle and palms with tasselled cord. Engravings of related trophies published in London in 1769 in F. Vivares, Book of different Trophies, were copied from those published in Paris in the 1740s as Plusieurs Trophées invented by Gilles Demarteau (d. 1776). The commode's façade medallion comprises a flower-vase inhabited by birds, after a fashion that had remained popular since the 17th century; while its flowers, like the sprigs at the commode's sides, derive from sources such as Gilles Demarteau's engravings of Jacques Tessier's Livre de Fleurs.
A related commode displaying a pastoral trophy and flower-basket, was formerly in the collection of Richard Penn, 4th Earl Howe, at Gopsall, Leicestershire, and has been dated to the 1760s (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, no 16, p. 161).
A related commode displaying a pastoral trophy and flower-basket, was formerly in the collection of Richard Penn, 4th Earl Howe, at Gopsall, Leicestershire, and has been dated to the 1760s (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, no 16, p. 161).