.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This elegant Goût Grec console was inspired by a design conceived by André-Charles Boulle and published by Mariette in his Nouveaux deisseins de meubles et ouvrages de bronze et de marqueterie inventés et gravés par André-Charles Boulle et sa famille; nouvelles recherches, nouveaux documents, 1979, p.218). Its simplified form and Virtruvian scroll mounts clearly reflects the taste for neo-classicism that was overshadowing rococo by the 1760's.
This console was possibly commissioned by Pierre-Gaspard-Marie-Grimod d'Orsay, comte d'Orsay. Although it is en suite in design to a pair of consoles à encoignures in ebony ordered by the Comte d'Orsay for the bedroom of his Paris hôtel particulier, circa 1768, the inventory after the death of his first wife, the princess Marie-Louise-Albertine-Amélie de Croÿ Molembais, only mentions the pair of consoles (sold from a Private Collection, Christie's New York, 21 May 1996, lot 333).
D'Orsay was the son of a wealthy fermier general and intendant des postes, Pierre Grimod Duford. The young Grimod d'Orsay's two worldly ambitions were to live in a sumptuous environment surrounded by exquisite works of art and to marry into the aristocracy. In 1770 he married the princesse de Croÿ-Molembais by whom he had one son, the future general d'Orsay. Their Paris hôtel particulier at 69 rue de Varenne was built in the 18th century for marquise de Saissac. Her descendants sold the hôtel in 1768 to the young comte who moved in with his mother. The ground floor was decorated in the latest neo-classical fashion by Jean-Franois-Thérèse Chalgrin (1734-1811). The boiseries from the salon are now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
This console was possibly commissioned by Pierre-Gaspard-Marie-Grimod d'Orsay, comte d'Orsay. Although it is en suite in design to a pair of consoles à encoignures in ebony ordered by the Comte d'Orsay for the bedroom of his Paris hôtel particulier, circa 1768, the inventory after the death of his first wife, the princess Marie-Louise-Albertine-Amélie de Croÿ Molembais, only mentions the pair of consoles (sold from a Private Collection, Christie's New York, 21 May 1996, lot 333).
D'Orsay was the son of a wealthy fermier general and intendant des postes, Pierre Grimod Duford. The young Grimod d'Orsay's two worldly ambitions were to live in a sumptuous environment surrounded by exquisite works of art and to marry into the aristocracy. In 1770 he married the princesse de Croÿ-Molembais by whom he had one son, the future general d'Orsay. Their Paris hôtel particulier at 69 rue de Varenne was built in the 18th century for marquise de Saissac. Her descendants sold the hôtel in 1768 to the young comte who moved in with his mother. The ground floor was decorated in the latest neo-classical fashion by Jean-Franois-Thérèse Chalgrin (1734-1811). The boiseries from the salon are now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.