REGENCY PERIOD FLAT DESK
Attributed to Charles Cressent (1685-1768)
In satinwood and amaranth veneer, with chased and partly gilded bronze ornamentation, gilded sheathed leather top encircled by a bronze mould, the belt opening onto three large drawers and two secret drawers flanking the central recessed drawer, the sides adorned with Bacchus masks and acanthus scrolls, the curved uprights surmounted by Chinese heads and finished with claws;restorations, accidents and missing parts to the veneer.
H.:76 cm (30 in.)
l.:202 cm (79 ½ in.)
P.:95 cm (37 ½ in.)
Provenance:
Baron Alfred de Rothschild (1842-1918) at Halton House, Buckinghamshire ;
His nephew, Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1882-1942);
The latter's son, Baron Edmund de Rothschild (1916-2009);
His Sale, Christie's London, July 3, 1975, lot 65 (Fig. 1);
Sale in Paris, Hôtel Meurice, December 1, 1976, lot 177;
Former Akram Ojjeh (1918-1991) collection;
Sale, Christie's Monaco, December 11-12, 1999, lot 53 (FF. 4,192,500) ;
Former Djahanguir Riahi collection (1914-2014).
Bibliography :
B.E. Escott, The story of Halton House, Country Home of Alfred de Rothschild, 2008, p.70 (illustrated).
A. Pradère, Charles Cressent, sculpteur, ébéniste du Régent, Éditions Faton, Dijon, 2003, p.265, fig. 44 (illustrated).
A Regence gilt-bronze mounted, satinwood and amaranth bureau plat, attributed to Charles Cressent
Within Cressent's oeuvre, flat desks remain the best-known pieces of furniture, and even if their proportion is relatively low in his corpus, they leave the clearest image of Charles Cressent's art among his contemporaries. A Cressent desk comparable to our own is illustrated in the famous portrait of the Turkish Ambassador Saïd Mehmet Pacha painted in 1742 by Jacques-André-Joseph-Camelot Aved (cf. fig. 2).
Our desk belongs to the very early part of Cressent's career, in the early 1720's. The influence of André-Charles Boulle's work is clear.
André-Charles Boulle is clear in the choice of bronze ornaments, the powerful curve of the legs and the overall shape of the desk. Indeed, the angular heads of women wearing Chinese hats can be found on flat desks in tortoiseshell and brass marquetry produced by Boulle's workshop in the same years, as can the faun masks or leafy falls decorating the lower part of the desk. However, as can be seen from our piece, Cressent departs from Boulle's work by lightening the belt line and lengthening the side drawers to the detriment of the central drawer.
Our desk belongs to a group of six pieces identified by Alexandre Pradère in the monograph he dedicated to Cressent's work under the section "Bureaux Plats à Têtes de Chinoises" (cfr. A. Pradère, Charles Cressent, Éditions Faton, Dijon, 2003, p.265):
- A first copy from the former collection of Charles Dupleix de Bacquencourt, Duc de Camaran, at Château de Courson (until the beginning of the 20th century, it had its own cartonnier).
- A second, acquired by J. Paul Getty in 1949 and now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles
- A third formerly in the Josse collection, sale in Paris, May 29, 1894, lot 152, then in the Doucet collection, then in the Ernest Cronier collection, sale in Paris, December 4, 1905 and finally in the François Coty collection, sale December 1, 1936, lot 84 (disappeared during the war).
- A fourth desk formerly owned by the Duke of Sutherland in Trentham (sold July 6, 1925, lot 485).
- A final copy from the Béhague collection, where it remains to this day.
Like all the examples mentioned, with the exception of the one from the former Sutherland collection, our piece displays a peculiarity found on other large Cressent desks: the masks of bearded men surrounding the central drawer conceal two secret drawers of the same depth as the others.
This feature, which seems to have been Cressent's own invention, enabled a secretary to renew ink, sealing wax or paper, without having access to the other three large drawers, which could thus remain locked.
Prestigious provenance: Rothschild-Ojjeh
The rarity of this model is heightened by its prestigious provenance; indeed, it is featured in an 1892 photo illustrating the salon of Halton House (cfr. fig. 3), the residence in the English county of Buckinghamshire belonging to Baron Alfred de Rothschild (1842-1918).
Alfred inherited Halton from his father, Baron Lionel de Rothschild (1808-1879); however, it was Alfred who gave the property its current chateau-like appearance in the most
Estim. 70,000 - 100,000 EUR
