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A LATE LOUIS XVI ORMOLU-MOUNTED SOLID MAHOGANY VOYEUSE CIRCA 1785 The fretwork back with a stylized lyre
Acquired in Paris, 1986.
With its delicate à l'antique mounts and 'Chinese' fret-carved back, this stylish voyeuse reflects the most avant garde taste of the end of the late 1780s and early 1790s. It is extremely rare to find Parisian seat furniture embellished with ormolu mounts in this period, although a parallel can be found in a remarkable suite of ormolu-mounted mahogany seat furniture made by the menuisier Georges Jacob and supplied by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre to the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, circa 1785-90. The suite, which comprised a settee, eight armchairs and eight side chairs, was supplied during one of the earlier phases of furnishing Carlton House, the London palace the Prince of Wales was lavishly decorating in the latest French taste, and is now in the King's Dressing Room, Windsor Castle (RCIN 10042, 20486 and 20590). Another fascinating possibility is that this voyeuse could be one of the rare instances in 18th century France of a piece of seat furniture being made by a cabinet-maker rather than a menuisier, disciplines which were normally strictly separated by the guild system. A similar but less lavishly mounted voyeuse with lyre back and ormolu paterae heading the legs, stamped by the most famous cabinet-maker of the period, Jean-Henri Riesener, is illustrated in B. Pallot, L'Art du Siège au XVIIIe Siècle en France, Paris, 1989, p. 18, which cites two further examples by Riesener in the Wertheimer and Gaston le Breton collections (the latter illustrated in F. Watson, Louis XVI Furniture, London, 1973, p. 144, cat. 190).