ATTRIBUTED TO PIERRE LANGLOIS, CIRCA 1770, THE MOUNTS POSSIBLY SUPPLIED BY DOMINIQUE JEAN

This commode is attributed to the London cabinet-maker, Pierre Langlois (1718-67). It is closely related to a group of commodes identified as by or attributed to him, based on the overall design, construction and choice of mounts. Langlois’s work was identified and discussed in a pioneering series of five articles by P. Thornton and W. Rieder in The Connoisseur published between December 1971 and May 1972. Born to French emigré parents, and probably trained in the Parisian workshop of the ébéniste, Jean-Francois Oeben, the French Rococo inspiration is very evident in his work.
The veneers and corner mounts of this commode are related to those found on a pair of two-drawer serpentine commodes attributed to Langlois at Sherborne Castle, Dorset; unspecified payments to Langlois are recorded in payments made by the 7th Lord Digby of Sherborne Castle in the 1760s to the craftsman. These mounts were almost certainly supplied by the bronze-founder and gilder Dominque Jean (c. 1736-1812), Langlois’s business associate and son-in-law (Thornton, Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois, Ebéniste', The Connoisseur, April 1972, no. 17). The same corner mounts and sabots are also on a pair of commodes, now called ‘The Craven Commodes’, almost certainly commissioned by William Craven, 6th Baron Craven, for Coombe Abbey, Hampstead Marshall or Ashdown House (‘The Exceptional Sale’, Christie’s, London, 7 July 2016, lot 323). Other commodes attributed to Langlois of near-identical form, with closely related veneers, and comparable mounts include a commode sold Christie’s, London, 13 November 1997, lot 150 (£28,750 inc. premium, and sold again, Sotheby’s, London, 13 November 1998, lot 182), and another commode on which all the mounts are identical to those found on the commode offered here (Christie’s, London, 5 April 2001, lot 171). Another virtually identical rosewood commode with boxwood and kingwood inlay but with different escutcheons was with Mallett in 1967 (advertised Country Life, 7 December 1967, p. 35).
A further Langlois characteristic of this commode is the black wash painted to the reverse.
The present commode may possibly have been supplied posthumously. As Lucy Wood shows in her ‘New Light on Pierre Langlois (1718-1767)’, Langlois’s widow, Tracey, continued to oversee the workshop after her husband’s death in 1767 through to circa 1773-74 at which date there were at least two significant sales of stock (The Furniture History Society Newsletter, no. 196, November 2014, pp. 5-6).