BY FRANÇOIS LINKE, PARIS, CIRCA 1900

These commodes are a superb fin de siècle interpretation of the playful sculptural style of the mid-18th century Régence manifest by Charles Cressent (1685-1768). The central ormolu-mount to the front of two children swinging a monkey (dressed in a skirt and bonnet) on a rope is identical to that found on a series of commodes made by Cressent in circa 1745; examples of which are today in the Louvre (OA 6868), the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Waddesdon Manor and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. A brilliant ébéniste and sculpteur, Cressent’s commode aux enfants balançant un singe embodies the full whimsy of the rococo and so heralds a transition from the Régence to the Louis XV style. The present model was conceived at the end of the 19th century and is thought to have first been made by François Linke for his fellow ébéniste Maison Krieger, an example of which is illustrated in P. Kjellberg Le meuble français et europeén du moyen âge à nos jours, Paris, 1991, p. 490. A singe commode of this model sold Christie’s, London, 28 October 2014, lot 18 (£47,500).