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| A Mahogany and Ormolu-mounted Empire Commode à Vantaux by Bernard Molitor
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Circa 1803
Height: 3 ft. 2 in. (96.5 cm)
Width: 4 ft. 9 ½ in. (146.5 cm)
Depth: 2 ft. 2 in. in. (67.5 cm)
Bernard Molitor (1755-1833), maître 1787
Provenance: Guillaume de Gontaut, Marquis de Biron (1859-1939); his sale Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 9-11 June 1914, lots 385-386 (one of a pair), as by Jacob
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In acajou moiré with a white marble top and a frieze drawer mounted with gilt-bronze gorgon’s mask, acanthus, anthemia and stars above two doors mounted with a central gilt-bronze antique candelabrum festooned with hanging garlands on a tripod altar base opening to reveal three tray drawers, flanked on the sides by tapering uprights in the form of Egyptian-headed herm figures, on a stepped base with an acanthus-chased ormolu moulding, stamped B Molitor on the top left under the marble.
This commode is of exceptional design and quality and counts among the finest examples of the work of Bernard Molitor, one of the most important Parisian ébénistes of the final years of the Ancien Régime and one of the few who successfully survived the Revolutionary era and fully adapted to the stylistic developments of the Directory, Consulate and Empire periods. It is a new addition to his œuvre and does not appear in the magisterial monograph on the cabinetmaker by Dr. Ulrich Leben (Molitor. Ebéniste de Louis XVI à Louis XVIII, Paris 1992).
Born in Luxembourg, Molitor is recorded in Paris from circa 1778, and by the time he became master in 1787 he already counted Marie-Antoinette among his patrons. His illustrious client list included the Queen’s intimates the Polignacs, the Comtesse de Lamarck, the Marquis de La Fayette and Madame de Staël’s husband the Swedish ambassador. His style at this phase of his career was very much in the late Louis XVI taste and comparable to the best work of Weisweiler, and he produced case furniture with richly-figured mahogany veneers decorated with exquisitely-chased bronze mounts, such as the commode and en suite secrétaire reputedly made for the King’s aunts at the Château de Bellevue (illustrated in Alexandre Pradère, French Furniture Makers from Louis XIV to the Revolution, London 1989, p.426-27, figs.526-27), or alternatively with sophisticated neoclassical marquetry, such as the pair of small tables à la Pompadour with Sheraton-inspired inlay supplied to the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin and now divided between the Wallace Collection, London and the Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California (see Peter Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture, London 1996, Vol.II, no.222, p.1133-37).
By 1800 he had fully embraced the nascent Empire style with its bolder, more simplified forms and rich gilt bronze decoration inspired by antique Roman models. Although his private business continued to prosper, he failed to win official orders from the Napoleonic Court, despite the Emperor’s extensive and costly programme of re-furnishing all the former royal palaces in the most up-to-date taste. The one exception was the furniture Molitor sent to Napoleon’s brother Jérôme, King of Westphalia from 1807-1813, for the refurbishment of his seat at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Kassel. The commission included two pairs of commodes and three pairs of console tables, largely still in situ, which proved instrumental in disseminating the French Empire style throughout Germany. Molitor had to wait until the Bourbon restoration to supply the Garde-Meuble of Louis XVIII with a pair of cabinets-on-stand in Japanese lacquer that had originally been ordered by Marie-Antoinette twenty years previously (now in the Louvre, ill. in Leben, p.66-67).
This commode is almost identical to an example published in plate 19 of Pierre de la Mésangère’s seminal Meubles et Objets de goût (reproduced in Leben, p.86), a multi-volume series of engravings illustrating the latest trends in Parisian furniture and decorative arts that began appearing in 1803. The printed design differs from the actual commode in the presence of a winged figure on the altar tripod base of the central candelabrum mount, and a slightly disparate disposition of the frieze bronzes, which also lack the central Medusa mask. De la Mésangère probably based his engraving on this actual commode, or if not, one very similar that was constructed at the same time and has now disappeared. Molitor seemed to favour the form of the commode à vantaux (with hinged doors concealing internal drawers) flanked by Egyptian-headed stiles or detached columns during the period 1800-1810, as seen on a mahogany example in a private collection dated circa 1800-02 (Leben, no.31, ill. p.42-43) as well as on the Wilhelmshöhe commodes of circa 1809-12 (Leben nos. 33A-D). The use of anthropomorphic pilasters with ormolu heads above and feet below is less frequent in Molitor’s work, though it is a motif found on other commodes produced during the Consulate period by his Parisian contemporaries Beneman (for Fontainebleau) and Lignereux (for the Prince of Wales), who interestingly had also both been active during the late years of the Ancien Régime (both pieces ill. Denise Ledoux-Lebard, Le Mobilier Français du XIXe Siècle, Paris 1989, p.69 and 438-39).
Identical Egyptian heads appear on another commode attributed to Lignereux made for the bedroom of General Moreau in circa 1800-02 (now in Fontainebleau), and also on a monumental commode in ebony and yew wood attributed to Jacob-Desmalter and supplied to Napoleon, now in the Toledo Museum of Art (both illustrated in Jean-Pierre Samoyault, Mobilier Français Consulat et Empire, Paris 2009, fig.149 and 151). It was not unusual for bronziers to produce the same model of mount for use by different cabinetmakers, and it has been suggested that this particular Egyptian bust was created by the leading bronze sculptor Thomire (Samoyault, p.84).
This commode was originally one of a pair, with a secrétaire en suite, from the distinguished collection of French paintings, sculpture, and furniture of Guillaume de Gontaut, Marquis de Biron, sold in 1914 as lots 385-387. In the sales catalogue the ensemble was erroneously attributed without basis to François-Honoré Jacob-Desmalter, at a time when research into the importance of the estampille was in its early stages. The Gontaut-Biron, are one the oldest families in France and trace their lineage to the 12th century, having maintained their seat at the Château de Biron in the Dordogne until the 1930s. The family’s eminent forebears include the sixth Duke Louis-Antoine, Maréchal de France and hero of the Battle of Fontenoy during the War of Austrian Succession, who in 1753 acquired the Hôtel Biron in Paris next to the Invalides (now the Rodin Museum). The ducal branch died out when the eighth Duke Armand-Louis was guillotined during the French Revolution, and the family line was then continued by his cousin Armand-Henri, Marquis de Biron, great-great-uncle of Guillaume. The Biron sale was the last of the great Paris auctions before the First World War and included important paintings and drawings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, David and Ingres, and sculpture by Houdon and Clodion. Among the furniture offered were pieces stamped by leading ébénistes such as Riesener, Saunier, and Jacob, along with a tulipwood bureau plat with its cartonnier by Pierre Garnier that is now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon.
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