Side table (commode en console)

This table with graceful, curvilinear lines has cabriole legs and is fitted with one drawer in its frieze. Its French name, commode en console, indicates that it is, in fact, a combination of a console table, designed to stand against a wall, and a commode, or chest of drawers.[1] A small number of such tables are known today, and they appear to have been in vogue for a short period during the middle of the eighteenth century.[2] Five were sold by the fashionable marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux (ca. 1703–1758) between December of 1753 and February of 1757.[3] They were veneered with tulipwood with the exception of one table, by far the most expensive of all, which was mounted with lacquer. In Duvaux's shop records it was described as a lacquer commode, with console legs, decorated with gilded bronze. It was sold for 1,150 livres on 13 May 1756.[4]

Considered as part of the wall decoration, most console tables were made of carved and gilded wood and were assembled by those joiners, known as menuisiers, who specialized in architectural woodwork. This side table, however, with its black-lacquered surface and Japanese lacquer veneer, was the work of an ébéniste.

In 1743 it had become mandatory for all members of the furniture-makers' guild to mark their work with their name.[5] The carcase of this table is stamped twice with the initials "B.V.R.B.," identifying its maker as Bernard van Risenburgh II. This talented and prolific artist, the son of the cabinetmaker Bernard I (ca. 1660–1738) and the father of Bernard III (ca. 1731–1800), who succeeded him, was known for his luxurious furniture mounted with end-cut wood, lacquer, or porcelain (see entry for no. 51).[6] He worked almost exclusively for marchands-merciers, dealers like Duvaux who specialized in goods for the high end of the market. The stamp "JME," the monogram of the Jurande des Menuisiers-Ébénistes, a committee in charge of maintaining standards of craftsmanship, accompanies Van Risenburgh's initials. Visiting the furniture workshops of guild members four times a year, the committee inspected all pieces and stamped them with their monogram if the quality was acceptable.[7]

During the eighteenth century, imported Japanese lacquer panels, most of which had to be dismantled from cabinets and chests dating to the 1660s and 1670s, were rare and very costly. In addition, the exotic material was difficult to cut and especially to bend in the desired serpentine shapes required for mounting on Rococo furniture without damaging the lacquer surface. For that reason, only the most skilled cabinetmakers–Van Risenburgh, for example–were entrusted with Japanese lacquer by affluent marchands-merciers such as Thomas-Joachim Hébert (d. 1773) and Simon-Philippe Poirier (ca. 1720–1785), who obtained it for them at auction or abroad.[8]

The Japanese lacquer on the table's drawer front shows a symmetrical image of small buildings and trees in a landscape setting. Symmetrical decoration is highly unusual in Japanese art, and upon close inspection it turns out that not one single piece of lacquer was used but a combination of two matched pieces with a vertical seam, barely visible, down the middle. It is likely that these panels were derived from a pair of Japanese cabinets dating to the second half of the seventeenth century.[9] A pair of cabinets was often decorated with an almost identical pictorial design but in mirror image. Although these pieces of furniture were no longer fashionable during the eighteenth century, the lacquer surfaces continued to be highly admired. Part of the left-hand door from one cabinet and part of the right-hand door from the other were probably cut up and combined on the drawer front of this side table. The panels from remaining doors, severely cropped, may have been reused for the sides. The legs as well as the areas surrounding the lacquer on the front and sides have been lacquered black to match, and gilt-bronze mounts cleverly mask the joints. Composed of scrolls, rocaille ornament, floral trails, and foliage, these beautiful mounts have the appearance of being cast as one piece. In fact, they consist of separate elements that overlap, the upper parts having been cut in such a way that they fit over the lower ones.

This commode en console is the only example known to exist that is mounted with Japanese lacquer. Possibly it is the one sold in 1756 by Duvaux, but little is known about its early history. During the early twentieth century it was in the possession of the legendary beauty and Parisian society figure Élisabeth de Caraman-Chimay (1860–1922), muse to Marcel Proust (1871–1922) and wife of Comte Henry de Greffulhe (1848–1932). The antiques dealer Paul Cailleux lent the table to the 1955–56 exhibition that was devoted to the most important eighteenth-century Parisian furniture makers.[10] Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman were the last private owners, and they donated this exquisite piece to the Museum in 1976.

Footnotes

1. Watson 1966a, pp. 226–29, no. 118; and Rieder 1994, p. 37, pl. III.

2. The earliest example may have been the console table with lacquer ordered in 1744 for Louis XV's bedchamber at Choisy. The Museum's table has been tentatively connected with this commission. See Pradère 1989, pp. 195–96.

3. Duvaux 1873 (1965 ed.), vol. 2, pp. 180, 279–81, 308, nos. 1590, 2461, 2480, 2714.

4. "une commode de lacq, les pieds à consoles, garnie en bronze doré d'or moulu"; quoted in ibid., p. 281, no. 2480. Sold to M. Masse.

5. Pradère 1989, pp. 12–13.

6. Ibid., pp. 183–99.

7. Ibid., p. 13.

8. Wolvesperges 1998, p. 68; and Wolvesperges 2001, pp. 3–4.

9. Impey and Kisluk-Grosheide 1994, pp. 52–53, figs. 6, 7.

10. Grands ébénistes 1955, no. 29, pl. 11.