Jean-François Denière 1774 - 1866 A highly important Charles X ormolu center table most probably commissioned for the 10th Duke of Hamilton for Hamilton Palace Paris, circa 1825

surmounted by a later white marble top.

Comparative Literature

R. Freyberger 'The Duke of Hamilton's Porphyry Tables,' The Magazine Antiques, September, 1993, pp. 348-355

L. C. Sanders, 'Hamilton, Alexander Douglas-, the tenth duke of Hamilton and seventh -duke of Brandon (1767-1852)', rev. K. D. Reynolds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

A. A. Tait, 'The Duke of Hamilton's Palace', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 125, No. 964, July 1983, pp. 394-402

I. Gow, Scotland's Lost Houses, London: Aurum Press, 2006, pp. 26-41

Overall in good condition; the white marble top is a 19th century later replacement, post 1882; the stretcher of the table was originally with black marble, now replaced with mahogany; the gilt-bronze in very good condition with impressive casting and chasing.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The present table is almost identical to a pair of gilt-bronze tables or 'stands' with large porphyry slab tops, which the 10^th Duke of Hamilton commissioned from Jean-François Dénière for Hamilton Palace in 1823.  The pair of tables, now in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, each are signed 'Dénière Fécit Paris 1823' and one bears a paper label inscribed 'Hamilton Palace'.  These tables have been the subject thorough research by Ronald Freyberger and were not only recorded in the Christie Manson and Woods sale catalogue of contents of Hamilton Palace of 1882, but are also recorded in many Hamilton Palace inventories as well as in the original bills from Dénière to the 10^th Duke (See: Ronald Freyberger 'The Duke of Hamilton's Porphyry Tables,' The Magazine Antiques, September, 1993, pp. 348-355).  The Duke most probably bought the two large porphyry slabs when he was on his tour through Rome in 1819 and they are possibly the 'Due Tavoli di Portido' in the 'Lista dei marmi mandate &c &c nella scozia da Roma nel Gennajo 1819' (Two porphyry table tops [in the] List of marbles sent etc. etc. to Scotland from Rome in January 1819).

The gilt-bronze tables were specifically made to fit the prized porphyry slabs.  The pair was a discrete order by Hamilton from Dénière and listed as 'Deux Tables en Bronze ciselé dans le genre du Siècle de Louis XIV' (two tables in chased bronze in the style of the Louis XIV period' costing 20,000 francs, 'Dorure des dites Tables a l'or molu' (The gilding of the said tables) costing 11, 400 francs.  The packing of the tables cost 475 francs and the transport to London was 667 francs, so the total cost was 32,542 francs, for which the Duke paid in installments over the next two years, closing the account on September 7, 1825.

The present table differs slightly from the pair of tables in that it is smaller and lacks the large applied aprons centered by masks to the center of the frieze to each long side.  It is almost certainly the table photographed by Thomas Annan, in situ in the Tribune at Hamilton Palace.  Annan photographed many of the interior views of the palace before the sale of the contents beginning in June of 1882.  The table in the Tribune is most probably lot 540 in the sale catalogue and is described as 'AN OBLONG TABLE OF OLD FLORENTINE PIETRE DURE MOSIAC, with border of verde antique – on stand of richly chased or-molu, the legs formed as terminal figures of boys, on stand with stretcher – 5 ft. 4 in. by 4 ft. 1 ½  in.' The marked catalogue states that the table was bought by Boore for £630.

Besides this entry in the sale catalogue, this table is recorded in four inventories of the furniture and pictures at Hamilton Palace from 1835-1876:

'Inventory of Furniture and Pictures &ca In Hamilton Palace &ca Taken in February 1835 and continued down to November 1840'
Page 65
'Tribune.  A Beautiful Pietra Dura Table with fine carved Bronze Gilt Stand. £400 " "'

Inventory of 1852 (Reference NRA (S) 2177/Volume 1228)
Page 96
[Tribune]
'a Large and beautiful Pietra Dura Marble Table top on a massive solid cast and finely chased gilt metal frame 5.4 x 4.2...A Red porphyry Vase mounted with gilt metal handles &c under Do £40 "'

(Reference NRS (S) 2177/Volume 1230)
'Special Inventory of Marbles Bronzes Objects of Virtu Buhl & ca at Hamilton Palace directed to be Entailed'
[Page 2]
'Tribune...Large Pietro duro Marble Top, on a massive solid Cast and chased, Gilt Metal Frame, Five feet four inches X four feet two inches. – Red Porphyry Vase, mounted with Gilt Metal handles & Ca under-do - £250 "  "' [Sum insured]

'Inventory of The Furniture Pictures Articles of Vertu &c, &c, & c, at Hamilton Palace 1876'. [Page 84]
'Tribune...A very fine Pietra Dura Table with Border of Verde Antique 5 ft 4 in by 4 ft 1 ½ in. on a Handsome gilt Metal frame with black a gold Base, on which is a Red Porphyry Vase in gilt Metal Mounts.'

Sadly the pietre dure top is lacking and finding its origin as well as the exact bill and identifying the date when Hamilton may have ordered the table from Dénière has proved difficult.  The top does not seem to appear in the list of marbles which he bought in Rome in 1819.  However, one of his art agents may have found it at a later date.  The table does not appear in the inventory of 1825 and is not apparent in the Duke's personal accounts to Dénière between 1825 and 1830; however it may have been in the Duke's London townhouse or possibly at the ducal apartments at the Palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh.  Another possibility as that the table was a later purchase between 1830 and 1835.

Jean-François Dénière

Jean-François Dénière set up business as fabricant de bronzes in 1803, he was at 58 rue de Turenne in 1813 and by 1820 at 9 rue d'Orléans au Marais. He went into partnership with his son François-Thimothée in 1844. According to the notes on makers in the French version of the catalogue for the 1862 International Exhibition in London, they were one of the first serious competitors to Thomire. The company's work was illustrated by J.B. Waring in his treatises on both the 1851 and the 1862 exhibitions, and George Wallis of the South Kensington Museum wrote in his analysis of the bronzes and works of art for the Art Journal Supplement 1851, decorative adjuncts in bronze ormolu formed a very striking feature of Deniere's display. The firm exhibited widely to the end of the century and finally closed in 1903 some sixty years after Thomire.

Hamilton Palace

When Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, inherited Hamilton Palace in 1819, it had already been extensively added to and altered between 1684 and 1701 under the direction of the architect James Smith.  In 1730, the 5th Duke of Hamilton (1703-43) commissioned William Adam to do a survey of the palace and to suggest improvements, while he was busy designing the palace's dog kennels named Châtelherault, after the French Dukedom which the Hamiltons still claimed.  Adam's engravings of the palace, although never executed, eventually were published in his Vitruvius Scoticus, printed in 1812.

In 1819 the 10th Duke commissioned Francesco Saponieri to supply new designs of the north front of Hamilton Palace.  In 1822, David Hamilton, a local architect, became the Duke's principal architect and builder taking Saponieri's stoic Italian neoclassical design and amalgamating it with Adam's Scottish baroque façade to create something monumental, albeit neither purely of one style or the other.

By the late 1820s, the Duke's architectural and design tastes had changed from the love of the Italian neoclassical style in favor of the French Empire style.  He moved from the Palazzo Pallavinci-Ropigliosi in Rome to the hotel d'Alberg in Paris.  In 1827, he commissioned Charles Percier to supply interior designs for seven of the principal public rooms in the palace including drawings for the principal staircase, staircase hall, entrance hall, billiard room, library, dining room and the Tribune.  Percier's entrance hall was designed as a monument to the Hamiltons with its vast size 42-foot ceiling and individual niches/positions for artwork, statuary and heraldic devices which glorified and lauded the Hamilton family heroes.  The Tribune, which connected the dining room to the picture gallery, was more conventionally neoclassical with grotesques to the ceiling akin to Percier and Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures.  However, none of Percier's interiors were to be executed as the Duke was ultimately persuaded by his architect David Hamilton to opt for a more simplified solution.  By 1831, the decorator and designer Robert Hume, one of the Duke's agents whom he had acquired from his father-in-law William Beckford, had filled the role as interior designer, discarding Percier's designs and creating his own brand of a 'Louis' style interior.

The 10th Duke of Hamilton

Alexander Douglas-Hamilton became the 10th Duke of Hamilton and 7th Duke of Brandon (1767-1852) at the death of his father, the 9th Duke, in 1819.  He also claimed the French title of Duke of Châtelherault as well as a rather far-fetched but legitimate claim to the Scottish throne.  In the early 1800s, he shared an enthusiasm for the Napoleonic ideal and its architecture with Luigi Canonica, an art agent and an architect.  By 1806 he was sent as ambassador to the court of St. Petersburg, coming into contact with another Italian architect, Giacomo Quarenghi, who designed a Riding School and Turkish Kiosk for Hamilton in 1810, which were never executed.  His marriage to Susan Euphemia Beckford, daughter of William Beckford in 1810, put him in contact with some of Beckford's agents, such as Robert Hume, who eventually became the chief interior designer of Hamilton Palace and Franchi, who bought art for the Duke in France during the 1820s and 1830s.

In many ways, Hamilton's enthusiasm for Napoleonic Imperialism echoed his Royal and aristocratic pretensions, driving his voracious collecting and shaping the designs for his palace.  His request of Jacques-Louis David in 1811 to paint a full-length portrait of Napoleon I was unconventional if not rather controversial especially as it was during the height of Britain's intense fighting against Imperial forces in the peninsular war.  The painting cost upwards of 25,000 francs, of which he only paid 18,650 francs or £1,050, much to the painter's frustration.  Hamilton placed the portrait in the dining room together with various portraits including two of other monarchs: Charles I of England after Van Dyck, and Philip IV of Spain by Velázquez, both of whom amassed the two greatest art collections of the 17th century.  Hamilton's patronage of Charles Percier of Percier and Fontaine, Napoleon's chief architects, in 1827 followed Hamilton's program of creating his own Imperial residence at Hamilton Palace.  He furnished the palace with great artwork taken from Italian palazzos such as the Palazzo Braschi, as well as from French collections specifically collecting furniture and bronzes with Royal provenance.  In 1843 his son married Princess Marie of Baden, who was the grand-daughter of Empress Josephine, and cousin to Napoleon III.

David Wilkie may have described the 10th Duke's view of himself best saying that the Duke 'in his own person, represents the noblesse of three great kingdoms – the generous chivalry of France, the baronial aristocracy of England, and the chieftans and thanes of our ancient kingdom [Scotland]: the first of our peers, the first of our cognoscenti; and in his palace possessing the first gallery of art our country can boast of'.

Sotheby's wishes to thank Ronald Freyberger for sharing his archival research on Hamilton Palace and its collection and is grateful to Dr. Godfrey Evans, Principal Curator of European Applied Art, National Museums Scotland for his research and advice in writing this footnote.