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Lot Essay
This 'picturesque' French-fashioned and sarcophagus-scrolled 'pier-commode-table' evoked ancient virtue with its heroic Roman busts displays on lambrequin-draped brackets that are enriched with bubbled cartouches amongst acanthus-wrapped and shell-scalloped ribbon-scrolls.
Its top, serpentined in cupid-bow, is ray-parquetried around a flower-marquetried 'pastoral' trophy displayed in a lozenge-mosaiced in hollow-cornered tablet. Mirror-matched flower sprigs enwreath a beribboned and flowered trophy comprising triumphal palms and myrtle beside a lyre, oboe and book of music. Such music trophies featured in engravings issued by the artist Gilles Demarteau l'Ainé (d. 1776) (G. de Bellaigue, '18th Century French Furniture', Apollo, January 1963, pp. 16 - 23, fig. 5). While the commode stands on bacchic lion-paws, a festive mask of the wind Zephyr, companion of the flower-deity Flora, would have originally embellished the commode's lambrequined apron, and served as a companion to the nature deity's masks displayed in beribboned and shell-capped cartouches on the drawers' ray-parquetried tablets. One such zephyr appears on a contemporary drawing of a commode attributed to the Tottenham Court Road ébéniste Pierre Langlois (d. 1765); while Langlois illustrated a related commode inlaid in the 'Politest manner' (inscrutez de fleurs en Bois) on his 1750s Anglo-French trade-card, which had been engraved for him by François-Antoine Aveline (d. 1780) (P. Thornton, B. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois Ebeniste', Connoisseur, March 1972, part 2, p. 106, fig. 3).
One of Langlois' contemporaries, the cabinet-maker James Cullen (d. 1779), wrote that such commodes of 'different colloured woods..with good brasses are more intended to furnish and adorn [grand apartments] than for real use..' (Thornton, ibid, p. 180). Other commodes with musical trophies, supplied for the Vyne, Hampshire, were recorded by a visitor to Langlois' workshops in 1766 (Thornton, ibid, p. 183). Langlois is also credited with the execution of commodes with musical trophies supplied to Sir Lawrence Dundas, Bt., for Moor Park, Hertfordshire (Thornton, ibid, part 3, p. 176 - 187, no. D and fig. 5.
Interestingly, Langlois appears to have used Charles Cressent's mounts as models to cast his own for this commode. Cressent, maître sculpteur in 1714, is known to have designed and cast his own mounts, despite three separate legal interventions by the guild. The warrior angle mounts are believed to have first been used on bureaux plats between 1740 and 1745 and are known on three examples today. One, originally that of cardinal Richelieu and in his sale of 1788 is today at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, another, originally possibly from the Palais Bourbon, is today at the palais de l'Élisée, and a final one at the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (A. Pradère, Charles Cressent, Dijon, 2003, pp. 131 - 136).
Its top, serpentined in cupid-bow, is ray-parquetried around a flower-marquetried 'pastoral' trophy displayed in a lozenge-mosaiced in hollow-cornered tablet. Mirror-matched flower sprigs enwreath a beribboned and flowered trophy comprising triumphal palms and myrtle beside a lyre, oboe and book of music. Such music trophies featured in engravings issued by the artist Gilles Demarteau l'Ainé (d. 1776) (G. de Bellaigue, '18th Century French Furniture', Apollo, January 1963, pp. 16 - 23, fig. 5). While the commode stands on bacchic lion-paws, a festive mask of the wind Zephyr, companion of the flower-deity Flora, would have originally embellished the commode's lambrequined apron, and served as a companion to the nature deity's masks displayed in beribboned and shell-capped cartouches on the drawers' ray-parquetried tablets. One such zephyr appears on a contemporary drawing of a commode attributed to the Tottenham Court Road ébéniste Pierre Langlois (d. 1765); while Langlois illustrated a related commode inlaid in the 'Politest manner' (inscrutez de fleurs en Bois) on his 1750s Anglo-French trade-card, which had been engraved for him by François-Antoine Aveline (d. 1780) (P. Thornton, B. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois Ebeniste', Connoisseur, March 1972, part 2, p. 106, fig. 3).
One of Langlois' contemporaries, the cabinet-maker James Cullen (d. 1779), wrote that such commodes of 'different colloured woods..with good brasses are more intended to furnish and adorn [grand apartments] than for real use..' (Thornton, ibid, p. 180). Other commodes with musical trophies, supplied for the Vyne, Hampshire, were recorded by a visitor to Langlois' workshops in 1766 (Thornton, ibid, p. 183). Langlois is also credited with the execution of commodes with musical trophies supplied to Sir Lawrence Dundas, Bt., for Moor Park, Hertfordshire (Thornton, ibid, part 3, p. 176 - 187, no. D and fig. 5.
Interestingly, Langlois appears to have used Charles Cressent's mounts as models to cast his own for this commode. Cressent, maître sculpteur in 1714, is known to have designed and cast his own mounts, despite three separate legal interventions by the guild. The warrior angle mounts are believed to have first been used on bureaux plats between 1740 and 1745 and are known on three examples today. One, originally that of cardinal Richelieu and in his sale of 1788 is today at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, another, originally possibly from the Palais Bourbon, is today at the palais de l'Élisée, and a final one at the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (A. Pradère, Charles Cressent, Dijon, 2003, pp. 131 - 136).