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Lot Essay
Pierre Garnier, maître in 1742.
Recognized as one of the innovators of neoclassicism, the marchand-ébéniste Pierre Garnier did execute furniture in the Louis XV style, but was already producing furniture in the fashionable goût grec taste in the early 1760's. Among his clients were the pioneering tastemakers Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, the duchesse de Mazarin, Germaine Baron (General Collector of Taxes), and, most importantly, the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour and Surintendant et Directeur des Batiments to Louis XV, as well as a key proponent of the emerging neoclassical idiom who also had a particular predilection for sober mahogany pieces in the goût anglais. Garnier is also distinguished for having designed and possessed the molds for his mounts, an unusual practice of the period that was generally forbidden by guild rules (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XV à la Revolution, Paris, 1989, p. 249). For other examples by Garnier with a similar sober use of mahogany and understated neo-classical mounts, see C. Huchet de Quenetain, Pierre Garnier, Paris, 2003, pp. 112-5.
Recognized as one of the innovators of neoclassicism, the marchand-ébéniste Pierre Garnier did execute furniture in the Louis XV style, but was already producing furniture in the fashionable goût grec taste in the early 1760's. Among his clients were the pioneering tastemakers Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, the duchesse de Mazarin, Germaine Baron (General Collector of Taxes), and, most importantly, the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour and Surintendant et Directeur des Batiments to Louis XV, as well as a key proponent of the emerging neoclassical idiom who also had a particular predilection for sober mahogany pieces in the goût anglais. Garnier is also distinguished for having designed and possessed the molds for his mounts, an unusual practice of the period that was generally forbidden by guild rules (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XV à la Revolution, Paris, 1989, p. 249). For other examples by Garnier with a similar sober use of mahogany and understated neo-classical mounts, see C. Huchet de Quenetain, Pierre Garnier, Paris, 2003, pp. 112-5.