BY LOUIS-ALEXANDRE BELLANGE, CIRCA 1820-25, AFTER A DESIGN BY CHARLES PERCIER AND PIERRE-FRANCOIS LEONARD FONTAINE

The model for this seat-furniture, which derives from antiquity, was popularised through the work of Percier & Fontaine, who include designs for armchairs and tables with lion monopodia supports in their Recueil de Décorations Intérieures (1812). A watercolour design of this model, part of 'Deux projets de fauteuils', circa 1817-20, signed by Louis-Alexandre Bellangé (1797–1861), son of Pierre-Antoine, is in a collection of drawings from l'atelier Bellangé, now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (S. Cordier, Bellangé, ébénistes: Une historie du goût au xix sièle, Paris, 2012, fig. 4). This design represents armchairs attributable to Pierre-Antoine Bellangé of 1815-20, and is closely related to seat-furniture from the Billiard Room of the château of Saint-Ouen of Zoé, comtesse du Cayla (ibid., p. 489, PAB 107). These designs by the son suggest an educational study of the work of the father, and during the later period of contractual association between father and son, from 1820 to 1825 in the workshop at la rue Neuve-Saint-Denise, this model of armchair could be stamped either 'P. Bellangé', as in this example, or 'L. Bellangé'. Examples of armchairs stamped 'L. Bellangé are illustrated in ibid., p. 500, 'LAB 1', and a pair of armchairs from the Ariane Dandois collection sold Sotheby's, New York, 25-26 October 2007, lot 523.