One of the most important and rare pieces by Armand-Albert Rateau to ever come to auction, the present armchair— commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. Blumenthal for the indoor swimming pool of their Upper East Side mansion— is one of only eight recorded examples of the model known to exist. Six of these, including the present lot, were designed and produced for the Blumenthals in 1919-1920. This armchair design is particularly significant within the artist’s career, in that it represents one of the first furniture designs created under his own name and created as part of his very first commission in the United States. Through meticulously sculpted bronze decorations, the armchair perfectly encapsulates the precocious talent of its maker and incorporates neoclassical and figurative references that make the piece all the more unique and significant in the history of 20^th century decorative arts.

1919 was a transformative year for the young Parisian designer. After resigning from his role as director of the decorating studios of Maison Alavoine, Rateau established his own company in a townhouse on the Boulevard Berthier in Paris. On November 26, he embarked on the ocean liner La Savoie for New York, where he was re-acquainted on board with Mr. and Mrs. Blumenthal— former Alavoine clients with whom he had previously collaborated. The encounter ultimately led Rateau to work independently on several projects for the couple, such as the furnishing for their residence in the Parisian suburb of Auteuil and for their house in Grasse in the South of France. His most important project however was for the Blumenthals’ New York City mansion located on East 70^th Street, for which he famously designed site-specific furniture and woodwork, including pieces for the patio surrounding their indoor swimming pool.

The Indoor Swimming Pool of George and Florence Blumenthal, East 70th Street, New York.

This challenging area—with walls decorated with elaborate murals featuring mermaids and sea creatures— provided Rateau with an opportunity to create a small number of furniture pieces with a shared and elevated aquatic theme. He created a number of new designs which included a set of six armchairs (of which the present lot originates), two tables and a small table lamp placed on the patio. The armchair in particular may be the most evocative and thematic design from the suite. In its construction, the chair is a reinterpretation in patinated bronze of the traditional “curule” design with a semi-circular base; there is however nothing traditional about Rateau’s lyrical take on the ageless form, which is enhanced with spectacular decorations of fish and shellfish throughout. Close observation of the decorative details, the meticulous placement of the shell and fish motifs and their gracious integration with the structure, reveals the work of a highly accomplished ornamentalist with a unique sensibility for scale and proportions. The high quality of the casting and the faultless chasing further contribute to the refinement of the work, setting a high standard for what was to follow.

Upon George Blumenthal's death in 1941, the suite of furniture— including the present lot— was passed onto a relative in Florida and made its way to the Palm Beach interior decoration and antiques company Smith Knudson Inc. In 1973, four of Blumenthal's six chairs were purchased by the jeweler George W. Headley III and placed in the fantastical mosaic, shell and stone-encrusted Rococo grotto on the grounds of his Lexington, Kentucky estate (today part of the Headley-Whitney Museum), before selling at auction in 2004.

Two additional examples of the chair model are known to have been executed outside of the Blumenthal commission. One belonged to Madame Rateau and was exhibited in 1926 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (of which Mr. Blumenthal was an advisory council member and then a president) as part of a temporary exhibition. Over a decade later, in 1938, Madame Rateau donated this very armchair to the Musée des Arts Déoratifs in Paris, where it was prominently included in the 1964 exhibition dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. The eighth known example adorned the legendary bathroom of the Duchess of Alba in Madrid, one of Rateau’s most iconic commissions represented in this collection through a rare vanity (lot 342).

Occasionally Rateau would reproduce an object with slight modifications and also keep for himself examples of his most important creations. According to period photographs there were two variants to the 'Blumenthal' design. One includes an additional row of fish on the back rest, the other has a rectilinear cross stretcher on the back legs in contrast with the curved lines of the model created for the Blumenthals. However, no surviving examples of these variants are currently known.

Of this superb armchair design, famed French curator Yvonne Bruhammer wrote: “This armchair is a new instance of the influence of the antique on a man who exemplified qualities that are rarely found together - a creative imagination, a love of fine materials and an instinct for perfect execution. Rateau has created this armchair both as an aesthete and as a sculptor.”