A fine and large french gilt-bronze mounted mahogany center table circa 1875

with rectangular inset marble top surrounded by a fine leaf-cast and chiseled border fitted at the corners with acanthus leaf-cast clasps, the frieze with three deep drawers and mounted all around with interlocking circles enclosing finely chased flowerheads, on hexagonal tapering legs headed by square block inset with gilt-bronze paterae above interlacing laurel wreath swags and terminating on acanthus leaf-cast sabots.

This exceptional writing table is virtually identical to a larger table in the Wallace Collection, London (F320), illustrated, P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, II, 1996, London, pp. 1142-1145.  The Wallace table which is of extremely large scale, had been in the collection of the 2^nd Marquess of Abercorn at Bentley Priory, and was acquired by Lord Hertford after the sale of the Abercorn collection in 1853.

Recorded in the Large Drawing Room at Hertford House in 1870 as a ‘Costly Centre Writing Table, Louis XVI finely mounted in chased ormolu with drawers, top covered with velvet,' it is listed again in the inventories of 1890 and 1898 in the Long Drawing Room.  The Wallace table was also exhibited at Bethnal Green from 1872-1875 where it was described as a ‘1063 Central Table, maple wood ornamented with gilt metal: French, 18^th century’ (Hughes, op.cit. p. 1144). 

Although thought to be of 18^th century origin at the time of purchase and at the time of the Bethnal Green exhibition, the Wallace desk was most likely made circa 1830-5, in the French early Neoclassical manner.  Other than being much larger, the Wallace desk differs from the present table in that its frieze is hung with foliate swags matching those surmounting the legs.  The overall design and the gilt-bronze swags were very probably inspired by the famous furniture, including a writing table, made for Lalive de Jully after designs by Le Lorrain (see, Svend Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, 1974, London, pl. 85).  Similar swags also appear on a writing table which appears in the engraved portrait of the Duc de Choiseul, executed in 1770 by E. Fessard after Van Loo (Eriksen, op.cit. pl. 462). 

The gilt-bronze mounts on the present table are inspired by the mounts on notable writing tables of the early Neoclassical period.  The frieze mounts are comparable with those on a bureau plat made by Jean-Francois Leleu, circa 1775, sold from the collection of Mrs. Marella Agnelli, Sotheby’s, New York, October 23, 2004, lot 134.  The overlapping imbricated discs running down the legs are comparable with a bureau plat by Pierre Garnier in the Huntington Collection (illustrated, R. Wark, French Decorative Art in the Huntington Collection, 1962, San Marino, California, pl. 55).

As noted by Hughes (ibid. p. 1145), a number of tables of the early Neoclassical period were on the London market in the 1830s and he suggests that they were more than likely made in Paris at this period to satisfy the English taste for them.  However, as noted above, the Wallace table was exhibited at Bethnal Green.  This museum, which was opened in June 1872, was for three years mainly occupied by the collections of paintings and other works of art and furniture belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, Bart.  This exhibition, revealing the collection for the first time to a broad public, may well have provided the impetus for copies of certain pieces to be made.

Although it cannot be precisely determined when the present table was made, or by whom it was made, the quality of the construction and the quality of the gilt-bronze mounts would suggest a Parisian firm of distinction.