A Louis XV cabinet
Rosewood, rosewood and boxwood fillets on oak and softwood, ormolu mountings. Rare, elegant two-door piece of furniture with a protruding front, curved sides and rounded corners on bracket feet. The gable somewhat recessed. On both doors, the sides and around the gable fields with optically three-dimensional diamond parquetry, outlined by narrow curved bands, the frames diagonally veneered. Appliquéd fire-gilt rocailles in the corners and in the centre of the doors. Restored, the feet slightly shortened, subsequent shrinkage cracks. H 177.5, W 148, D 43 cm.
Paris, mid-18th C.
The most famous piece of furniture of this design is the cabinet created in around 1755 by Bernard II. Van Risen Burgh for Jean Baptiste de Machault d´Arnouville, who was the highest treasury official at the court of King Louis XV from 1745 onwards. The doors are inset with Chinese red-grounded lacquer panels of the Quianlong period and the frames are additionally reinforced with sumptuous fire-gilt bronze appliques. The piece is today housed in the Château de Versailles (inv. no. V5090).
The form of this type of cabinet, with its inswept gable and bracket feet, was developed during the Régence period and used up until the reign of Louis XVI. It was occasionally used as a design for fall front writing desks (known in French as secrétaire à abattant) but more frequently it was used for library cabinets, the door panels of which were fitted with mesh so that the treasures contained therein were visible to the admirer but remained guarded from unauthorised access.
Provenance
Private collection, Westphalia.
Literature
Cf. Kjellberg, Le mobilier français du XVIIIe siècle, Paris 2008, p. 722 f., for a similar cabinet with the mark of Jean Georges Raisin.
For the cabinet made for the "contrôleur général des finances", Jean Baptiste de Machault d´Arnouville, see Arizzoli-Clémentel, Versailles Furniture of the Royal Palace 17th and 18th Centuries, vol. 2, Dijon 2002, no. 8.