A German mahogany and parcel-gilt clock secretaire, late 18th century, the dial signed Jansen à Neus

The collection of Paul Hirsch (1881–1951), as stated on a handwritten note to the back of the right panel, Frankfurt, where photographed in the early to mid-1930s, then after 1936 in Cambridge;

Thence by inheritance to his wife Olga Hirsch (1889–1969);

To their son Robert Hirsch (1920–1984);

Thence by descent to his son Desmond Hirsch (1950–).

The Roentgen workshop for fine furniture at Neuwied had an enormous international influence, supplying richly-ornamented, beautifully-made pieces for top clients including the royal families of France, Russia, and Prussia. This extraordinary success for a German workshop rested on the combination of technical skill and business acumen shown by Abraham Roentgen (1711–1793) and his son David (1743–1807), but also the ability of their many employees, who were rigorously trained and numbered almost two hundred at the workshop's peak. Many of these makers would also create furniture independently, creating a broader market for furniture in the Roentgen style that was the subject of a 2023 exhibition at Neuwied entitled Möbel à la Roentgen. This clock secretaire is an example of a piece from this wider circle of Roentgen-influenced artisans: its use of mahogany with smart gilt borders and its architectural linearity is unmistakable, as are certain signature decorative motifs. For example, the handles shaped like swags are present on numerous pieces of Roentgen furniture (e.g. the table in the Cooper Hewitt, 1952-160-1) as well as those by other adherents to the style such as Johann Gottlieb Frost, Georg Rudolph Gambs and Johannes Kroll.¹ The fluting below the clock face is also typical, and can be seen on, for example, an obelisk-form clock signed Roentgen in the MET (2015.504a–d) and a smaller clock in the same museum that is attributed to his workshop (2002.237) This fluting, which ultimately harks back to the columns and triglyphs of classical architecture, continued to be used by some of the Roentgens' most prominent followers: Heinrich Gambs (1765–1831), for instance, uses it on two longcase clocks in the Hermitage that have clear stylistic affinities with the present lot.²

This piece has been passed down within the eminent Hirsch family, and was first acquired by Paul Hirsch (1881–1951). Hirsch was an erudite collector with a particular interest in music: during his lifetime, he regularly opened to the public his vast library of books and manuscripts related to the history of Western classical music, and this unrivalled collection is now housed at the British Library.³ In 1911, he married Olga Ladenburg, whose significant collection of decorated papers was bequeathed to the British Library and today sits on adjacent shelves to her husband's books in the library's main St Pancras site.⁴ The Hirsch family fled Germany in 1936 to settle in Cambridge; the image above shows the present lot at their Frankfurt residence. Paul Hirsch's brother was also a collector, the famous Robert von Hirsch whose colossal collection of over seven hundred pieces was called the 'sale of the century' when it came to Sotheby's in 1978.

¹ C. Cornet and B. Willscheid (ed), Möbel à la Roentgen, Neuwied, 2023, cat. 5, 10 and 24.

² These pieces are not yet in the digitised tranche of the Hermitage's collection, but have the accession numbers Epr-6196 and ERMb-584 and are both visible in the Hermitage's virtual tour of Hall 185, available at: <https://pano.hermitagemuseum.org/newpano/en/main/#node60>

³ See 'The Paul Hirsch Music Collection', The British Library Blog, 5 March 2025. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/the-paul-hirsch-music-collection>  

⁴ See M. M. Foot, ‘The Olga Hirsch Collection of Decorated Papers, British Library Journal, 7/1, 1981, pp.12-38 and F. Perry, 'Cataloguing the Paul Hirsch Papers', The British Library Blog, 19 February 2025. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/cataloguing-the-paul-hirsch-papers>