Rolltop desk
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Flat-panelled roll-top desk with rounded corners, which is built in two stages and is supported on four cabriole legs. The legs are triangular in section with chamfered edges and slightly concave sides flanking their fore-edges. The lower stage contains a shallow centre drawer extending half the depth of the desk flanked on each side by two superimposed drawers. The frieze forming the top of the upper stage contains two outer drawers which flank a writing-stand faced with a false matching drawer front. The stand pulls out on a telescopic frame and can be raised to an inclined plane by means of two steel arms at the back which engage in a ratchet fitting of solid mahogany. The right-hand drawer is divided in its forward section into three compartments for writing materials. Only the trough of silvered metal for the sponge is still in place. When the roll-top is opened the writing slide draws forward 20 cm. The nest is in three tiers and consists of three trays flanked on each side by three drawers. The bottom right-hand drawer is divided in its forward section into three compartments for writing materials: the ink-well, pounce pot and sponge container of silvered metal survive incomplete. Below the bottom tray is a secret compartment closed by a hinged lid secured by a lock. The lock above the roll-top controls the slide and the five drawers of the lower stage as well as the roll-top.
The desk is elaborately veneered with marquetry in twenty panels: on the roll-top a trophy emblematic of Poetry and Literature, flowers in eight panels, fruit in six, the cipher MA(?) in two at either end, a head of Minerva and the arms of a Daughter of France in two on the back, and an Apollo head in a sunburst in the centre of the top. The gilt-bronze mounts include a pair of vigorously modelled twin-branch candelabra and lion's paw feet.
The French furniture historian, Pierre Verlet, debunked the myth that the ‘MA’ cipher on this roll-top desk referred to Queen Marie-Antoinette, in a letter to James de Rothschild in 1938. Hitherto, its supposed illustrious provenance had led to it being valued at £7,500 in Miss Alice de Rothschild’s probate inventory of 1922, the highest valuation for any of the pieces at Waddesdon Manor by Riesener. Verlet noted that the arms in marquetry on the side were those ‘of a Daughter of France’, and concluded the obvious candidate was Madame (Marie-)Adélaïde, daughter of Louis XV. Her Sèvres porcelain inkstand in the Wallace Collection had been subject to the same confusion, the ‘MA’ cipher acquiring a romantic and fervently desired link with the ill-fated queen. This is strengthened by the similarities of closely related desk in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon that was made for Madame Adélaïde’s sister, Madame Victoire (inv. 2082).
It is not certainly known where Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired this table, but Miss Alice records in her 1906 Catalogue that he bought it ‘from the Collection of Sir Henry Hoare at Stourhead, - Sir Henry stated that it had been bought by his great-uncle in the streets of Paris after the Revolution of 1793’. It does not appear in any nineteenth-century inventories or sale catalogues from Stourhead, but may well have been acquired by Ferdinand by private treaty, at some point before 1885, when it was illustrated in Alfred de Champeaux's Le Meuble.
Other exhibition labels
- The French furniture historian, Pierre Verlet, debunked the myth that the ‘MA’ cipher on this roll-top desk referred to Queen Marie-Antoinette, in a letter to James de Rothschild in 1938. Hitherto, its supposed illustrious provenance had led to it being valued at £7,500 in Miss Alice de Rothschild’s probate inventory of 1922, the highest valuation for any of the pieces at Waddesdon Manor by Riesener. Verlet noted that the arms in marquetry on the side were those ‘of a Daughter of France’, and concluded the obvious candidate was Madame (Marie-)Adélaïde, daughter of Louis XV. Her Sèvres porcelain inkstand in the Wallace Collection had been subject to the same confusion, the ‘MA’ cipher acquiring a romantic and fervently desired link with the ill-fated queen. This is strengthened by the similarities of closely related desk in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon that was made for Madame Adélaïde’s sister, Madame Victoire (inv. 2082).
- It is not certainly known where Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired this table, but Miss Alice records in her 1906 Catalogue that he bought it ‘from the Collection of Sir Henry Hoare at Stourhead, - Sir Henry stated that it had been bought by his great-uncle in the streets of Paris after the Revolution of 1793’. It does not appear in any nineteenth-century inventories or sale catalogues from Stourhead, but may well have been acquired by Ferdinand by private treaty, at some point before 1885, when it was illustrated in Alfred de Champeaux's Le Meuble.
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
1240 x 1192 x 702
Labels
"Tower Drawing Room By Left Window Entering"
Label
...R, / sterie / ...ronzes / ...Princes...
Label
two identical, stuck to the inside of the carcase behind the left-hand drawer of the frieze
Provenance
- Probably supplied to Madame Adélaïde (b.1752, d. 1800); possibly acquired by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (b. 1758, d. 1838); probably inherited by his great-nephew Sir Henry Hoare (b. 1824, d. 1894); acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898) before 1885; inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.
Collection
- Waddesdon (National Trust)
- Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957
Bibliography
- Pierre Ramond; Chefs-d'Oeuvre des Marqueteurs; vols 1 & 2; Paris; Éditions Gallimard; 1996; Vol. II, p. 155
- Alfred de Champeaux; Le Meuble. II. XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles.; Paris; L. Martinet; 1885; Vol. II, pp. 220,222
- Émile Molinier; Histoire Générale des Arts Appliqués à L’Industrie du V à la fin du XVIII Siècle; Paris; E. Levy; 1896; Vol. III, p. 156
- Pierre Verlet; Möbel von J.H. Riesener; 1955?; note 15, Fig. 7
- The Burlington Magazine; The Burlington Magazine Publications Limited; Vol. CI, July/Aug. 1959
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts; Paris; Gazette des Beaux-Arts; 2e trim, July/Aug. 1959
- Versailles: deux siècles d'histoire de l'art. Études et chroniques de Christian Baulez; Versailles; Société des Amis de Versailles; 2007; p. 96
- Helen Jacobsen, Rufus Bird, Mia Jackson; Jean-Henri Riesener: Cabinetmaker to Louis XVI & Marie-Antoinette Furniture in the Wallace Collection, the Royal Collection & Waddesdon Manor; Philip Wilson Publishers; cat. 6
- Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Anthony Blunt; Furniture Clocks and Gilt Bronzes: The James A de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; 2 vols; Fribourg; Office du Livre; 1974; cat. 64