Side Chair

This side chair is part of a suite of Louis XVI–style furniture that John Taylor Johnston (1820–1893) purchased from the firm of Ringuet-Leprince and L. Marcotte in about 1856. This international firm had showrooms in both Paris and New York, and it is believed that at least some of the pieces of the suite were made in Paris for the New York commission. Johnston, a railroad executive and the first president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, used the furniture in the music room of his residence at 8 Fifth Avenue. The suite (68.69.1–68.69.11, 68.165.1–68.165.6) includes two sofas, two armchairs, a table, two matching cabinets, a third large cabinet, six matching side chairs, a pair of lyre-back side chairs, and a firescreen. After Ringuet-Leprince retired in 1860, the firm became known as L. Marcotte and Company. Léon Marcotte was New York's most noted cabinetmaker and interior decorator during the 1860s.