A Pair of Louis XVI Giltwood Marquises by Georges Jacob, Circa 1785

Collection of Zeineb and Jean-Pierre Marcie-Rivière, Christie's Paris, 8-9 June 2016, lot 94;

Where acquired by the present collector.

The marquise is a type of French seat furniture resembling a small settee, of a scale midway between a sofa and a bergère (armchair with an upholstered back and sides). Developed in the second hlaf of the eighteenth century, the form was described by Henry Havard in the Dictionnaire de l'ameublement et de la décoration depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours (1887) as 'une sorte de fauteuil à bois voyant, à dossier bas, à accotoirs élévés, à la fois large et profond, qui a sa place marquée au coin de la cheminée et qui sert généralement à la maîtresse de la maison'. The model reached its heyday during the late Louis XVI period and was a particular specialty of the prolific court menuisier Georges Jacob, one of the principal Parisian workshops supplying important groups of seat furniture to the royal palaces of Versailles, Petit Trianon, Saint-Cloud, Compiègne and the Tuileries, as well as to the residences of the King's brothers the Comte de Provence (future Louis XVIII), the Comte d'Artois (future Charles X) and his sister Madame Elisabeth. A similar pair of marquises by Jacob with laurel-carved rails is in Grog-Carven bequest to the Louvre, Paris (OA 10509.1-2), and another related pair from the collection of Louis and Claude Cartier was sold Sotheby's Monaco, 25 November 1979, lot 177.

Zeineb and Jean-Pierre Marcie-Rivière formed one of the most important modern art collections in Paris in the second half of the twentieth century, including works by Francis Bacon, Nicolas de Staël, Jean Dubuffet, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Brice Marden and François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne along with Greek and Roman antiquities and eighteenth-century French furniture, as well as a significant group of paintings and works on paper by the Nabi artists Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard bequeathed to the Museé d'Orsay in 2016. The collection was housed in their hôtel particulier in the rue de Varenne decorated by Renzo Mongiardino and Alberto Pinto.