Commode

This rectangular chest of drawers with bombé front and ends is supported by four tall cabriole legs, each threesided in section. The two drawers are secured by a single lock in the upper drawer. A pictorial scene of ruins and buildings is veneered on the center section of the front, flanked by Neoclassical vases with flowers on top; veneered on each end is an arrangement of flowers and scrolls. The chest of drawers is elaborately ornamented with gilt-bronze mounts. The style of the architectural landscape and the flanking vases on the front suggests the work of the ébéniste Pierre-Antoine Foullet, who was known for sumptuous case pieces mostly in transitional or Neoclassical style, embellished with classical urns or floral ornament in oval medallions, and landscape scenes with architectural ruins. The marquetry of a secretary in the Wallace Collection, London, even bears Foullet’s signature.(1) The bombé shape of the commode and the bronzes of late Rococo style, however, are earlier in date than the marquetry.(2) In the late 1760s Foullet often worked in collaboration with Léonard Boudin, who supplied him with furniture to be veneered.(3) Boudin began as a cabinetmaker but then became a dealer, selling pieces made by a number of his contemporaries in addition to Foullet. The carcase of this commode was probably made by Boudin and turned over to Foullet, who had it veneered and mounted with bronzes and sold it in the late 1760s.(4)

Catalogue entry from: William Rieder. The Robert Lehman Collection. Decorative Arts, Vol. XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 211.



NOTES:
1. Hughes, Peter. The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Furniture. 3 vols. London, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 954 – 64, no. 194. For information on Foullet, see Pradere, Alexandre. French Furniture Makers: The Art of the Ébéniste from Louis XIV to the Revolution. London, 1989, pp. 275 - 277. [Translation of Les ébénistes français: De Louis XIV a la Révolution. Paris, 1989.]
2. The information in this entry was most generously provided by Alexandre Pradère. See Alexandre Pradère to William Rieder, letter of 28 September 2000 (Robert Lehman Collection files).
3. For information on Boudin, see Pradère 1989, p. 271.
4. The same bronzes framing the front panel are on a lacquer commode stamped by P. A. Foullet (advertisement by Ader & Picard, Paris, in Burlington Magazine 113 [ June 1971], p. lxxx), but they are also found on a number of other commodes, stamped by Boudin and by several other cabinetmakers, including Carel, Jean Demoulin, Jean-Pierre Latz, Pierre III Migeon, and François Rubestuck.

[Bensimon, New York]. Acquired by Robert Lehman through Bensimon in 1953.