A Louis XVI style gilt-bronze mounted painted wood, “en grisaille” varnish and tulipwood veneered secretaire à abattant, late 19th century, after a model by René Dubois
Lot Closed
June 25, 12:50 PM GMT
Estimate
5,000 - 8,000 EUR
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Read more.Lot Details
Description
opening with one drawer, a fall-front revealing four drawers and two shelves, and two lower doors, the inside of the fall-front fitted with a writing surface covered in brown morocco leather, decorated in the upper part with Cupid holding a flaming torch, and in the lower part with a young girl burning incense in an athénienne before an allegorical figure holding a cornucopia, the chamfered mounts adorned with caducei, the sides decorated with allegorical scenes and putti, resting on screw feet, surmounted by a white veined marble top with an openwork gallery featuring a guilloché frieze, stamped twice P. CHORIER
Haut. 134 cm, larg. 78 cm, prof. 39 cm; Height 52 ¾ in, width 30 2/3 in, depth 15 1/3 in
Sotheby's, New York, 17 October 2015, lot 763 (sold 7 500 $)
Related literature
T. Wolvesperges’ Le Meuble français en laque au XVIIIe siècle, 2000
A. Forray‑Cartier and M. Kopplin, Les secrets de la laque française,2014
The cabinetmaker René Dubois (1737–1799) was particularly renowned for his frequent use of the grisaille technique in the ornamentation of his works. The grisaille technique is a pictorial method executed entirely in monochrome, using various shades of grey, olive, beige, or white to imitate sculpted relief. Employed to create the illusion of depth and sculpture, it appears notably on the friezes and medallions of furniture and woodwork from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
His famous secrétaires en grisaille, of which one example was sold at Tajan in Paris on 20 December 2000 and another at Bonhams on 18 December 2020, lot 70, from the Duthuit collection, was widely copied by numerous nineteenth‑century cabinetmakers, among them Beurdeley, who also produced a secrétaire in the manner of Dubois sold at Sotheby’s New York, 19 April 2007, lot 46 (sold 60,000$).
Illustrated in A. Forray‑Cartier and M. Kopplin, Les secrets de la laque française,2014, the trompe‑l’œil effect created by the shaded border is a stylistic signature specific to René Dubois, while the grisaille decoration is inspired by the sculpted compositions of Louis‑Félix de La Rue (1731–1765), characteristic of the emerging Neoclassical taste. A similar version of this secrétaire was sold by Christie’s, New York, on 23 October 1998, lot 164, illustrated in T. Wolvesperges’ Le Meuble français en laque au XVIIIe siècle, with the painting attributed to L.-F. Delarue, Dubois’s cousin, who worked in his workshop.