The present vanity table figures as a masterwork within the oeuvre of the French artist and designer Armand-Albert Rateau. Combining some of Rateau’s most coveted motifs and materials, the vanity table offers functionality while presenting an incredibly graceful and exquisite form. A black marble top is framed in white marble while neoclassical floral elements in patinated bronze adorn the mirror borders and top of the table legs, enhancing the delicate proportions of the vanity. Central to the composition are a pair of birds, facing symmetrically back to back, creating a structure which holds attached the circular mirror. Connected to the metal frame surrounding the mirror are two stylized butterflies and three electrified flowers that brighten the face of the vanity’s sitter. Of his father’s artistic vision, Rateau’s son François Rateau has said that he “searched for a delicate aesthetic interpretation in which Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Baroque influences were blended with his own highly personal modern style.” Particularly evident in the present vanity table, Rateau has materialized his stunning and unique decorative vision which he had cultivated since the early 1900s.

Rateau, born in 1882 in France, studied sculpture at the École Boulle. At the 1900 International Exposition in Paris, Rateau assisted decorator-ceramicist Georges Hoentschel to decorate the interior of the Union des Arts Décoratifs pavilion in the Art Nouveau style. This practice in ornamentation undoubtedly influenced Rateau’s understanding of decorative sculpture. In 1905, he took a leadership position at Maison Alavoine, a firm specializing in period revival and neoclassical furnishings. At the onset of World War I, Rateau made a highly influential trip to Southern Europe where he explored archaeological and excavation sites. He became enthralled with excessive ornamentation and ancient bronze furniture which clearly informed his unifying design concept. In 1919 after the war, Rateau returned to Paris and opened his own decoration firm. He had a very fruitful period following the launch of his independent career, his earliest patron being the German-born American financier and businessman George Blumenthal and his wife, for whom Rateau worked on their New York Townhouse and multiple properties throughout France.

The design for the present vanity table originated from a project for Rateau’s second and most prominent client, French couturier Jeanne Lanvin. Having established her fashion business before the first world war, Lanvin approached the decade of the 1920s with new ventures. In addition to fully redecorating her apartment on rue Barbet-de-Jouy, Lanvin launched a decoration company and sport clothing brand. For the townhouse Rateau was enlisted as chief designer and, drawing on his interest in themes from antiquity, he created unique and splendid spaces ripe with patterned floors, carved relief walls and bronze figural elements with fauna and animalia bordering on the mythical. Primarily utilizing patinated bronze, oak, stucco, gilt wood and carved stone, he created a highly decorative and stunning bedroom, bathroom and boudoir with a cohesive vision. The figural bronze structure and marble top of the vanity blended cohesively in the artist’s very first gesamtkunstwerk. This project would set the course for Rateau’s career. He went on to design interiors for a select, elite clientele including the seventh Duke of Alba Jacobo Maria del Pilar Carlos, Countess Beaurepaire, Baroness Eugene de Rothschild, Baron and Baroness de Klitzing and Cole Porter.

The vanity table produced for Jeanne Lanvin is now on permanent display in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris after the apartment interior was saved from demolition in 1965 by Lanvin’s son-in-law, Prince Louis de Polignac. Another example was displayed in 1926 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during a traveling exhibition of works from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Moderne in Paris. The present offering is either a third example, or the very one to have been on display at the Met. The vanity table and mirror is emblematic of Rateau’s ingenious vision that infused classical, antiquity, and Baroque techniques and themes with a modern sensibility to create a truly stunning design language. The present vanity table presents an incredibly rare opportunity to acquire a particularly rare and quintessential design masterpiece of Armand-Albert Rateau.