Rolltop desk
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Flat-panelled roll-top desk supported on four straight tapering legs square in section. Built in two stages, the lower stage contains two drawers flanking a shallower central drawer which projects slightly. Dummy drawer fronts of the same design are repeated on the back. When the roll-top is opened the writing slide draws out 18 cm. The nest behind the roll-top is in three tiers and consists of three trays flanked on each side by three drawers. The bottom right-hand drawer, which was originally fitted with writing materials, is marginally shallower and less deep than the others. It rests on a loose mahogany tray which together with the drawer can be drawn out of a cut-out section in the right end by pulling a metal lever concealed beneath the projecting moulding on the outside. Its purpose was to allow for the replenishing of ink and sand and for the re-cutting of pens without having to open the roll-top. The roll-top, the slide and the three drawers in the lower stage are controlled by the lock in the centre of the fore-edge of the top.
Pictorial scenes emblematic of the Arts, Princely Virtues, etc. are veneered on seven panels. They represent: War and Royalty (roll-top), Poetry (back), Vigilence (left wing), Love of the Arts (right wing), two heads of Minerva on either end of the lower stage, and Study (top). Twelve other panels are veneered with fret marquetry. The gilt-bronze mounts include heavy laurel swags on the legs and twisted two branch candelabra flanking the roll top.
This remarkable and lavish desk was supplied to the Comte de Provence, younger brother of Louis XVI and future Louis XVIII in March 1774 for his use in his private study below the Galerie des Glaces at the Palace of Versailles. It was inventoried in his study in the south wing of the palace after the location of his apartments moved, according to the strict rules of precedence at the court.
It was seized by the Convention and sold in the Revolutionary sales, after which it was acquired by a pair of Strasbourg businessmen and publishers, Jean-Georges Treuttel and Jean Godefroy Würtz, who published long and detailed descriptions of it. It had been earmarked to be part of the collections of the new national museum (later the Louvre), but it was judged to be too similar to Oeben and Riesener’s masterpiece, the desk made for Louis XV (now returned to Versailles). Treuttel and Würtz advertised it for sale in 1794 at 12,000 livres, but were unable to sell it. They later attempted to sell it back to its original owner, by then Louis XVIII, for 4,8000 francs, but he was not willing to pay for what he likely regarded as his own property.
It bears inscriptions that aid in tracking its location in the nineteenth century (it was in London in 1816, and Brussels in 1861), but we do not know from where Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired it. It appears in an 1897 photograph of the Morning Room at Waddesdon Manor, in the location where it is displayed today.
Other exhibition labels
- This remarkable and lavish desk was supplied to the Comte de Provence, younger brother of Louis XVI and future Louis XVIII in March 1774 for his use in his private study below the Galerie des Glaces at the Palace of Versailles. It was inventoried in his study in the south wing of the palace after the location of his apartments moved, according to the strict rules of precedence at the court.
- It was seized by the Convention and sold in the Revolutionary sales, after which it was acquired by a pair of Strasbourg businessmen and publishers, Jean-Georges Treuttel and Jean Godefroy Würtz, who published long and detailed descriptions of it. It had been earmarked to be part of the collections of the new national museum (later the Louvre), but it was judged to be too similar to Oeben and Riesener’s masterpiece, the desk made for Louis XV (now returned to Versailles). Treuttel and Würtz advertised it for sale in 1794 at 12,000 livres, but were unable to sell it. They later attempted to sell it back to its original owner, by then Louis XVIII, for 4,8000 francs, but he was not willing to pay for what he likely regarded as his own property.
- It bears inscriptions that aid in tracking its location in the nineteenth century (it was in London in 1816, and Brussels in 1861), but we do not know from where Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired it. It appears in an 1897 photograph of the Morning Room at Waddesdon Manor, in the location where it is displayed today.
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
overall height 1321
excluding candelabra 1119 x 1371 x 763
Marks
J.H.RIESENER
Maker's mark
beneath the back rail in the centre
Inscriptions
C / 3
Inscription
on lead plaque ftted to underside of the carcase below the right-hand drawer
Labels
"Morning Room By Left Window Entering"
Label
Provenance
- Supplied to Louis Stanislas Xavier, comte de Provence (b.1755, d. 1824); sold at the Garde-Meuble National sale,1793, bought by Marceau; acquired by 1794 by Jean-Georges Treuttel (b. 1744, d. 1826) and his nephew Jean Godefroy Würtz (b. 1768, d.1841); acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild by 1898; 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
- 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; pp. 286-96; cat. 63
- Pierre Verlet; Le Mobilier Royal Francais; III; Paris; Picard; 1994; p. 105; pp. 136-138
- Pierre Verlet; Möbel von J.H. Riesener; 1955?; Fig. 8
- The Burlington Magazine; The Burlington Magazine Publications Limited; July/Aug. 1959, p. 268, Fig. 17
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts; Paris; Gazette des Beaux-Arts; 2e trim, July/Aug. 1959, p. 26, Fig. 4
- Pierre Verlet; French Royal Furniture; London; Barrie and Rockliff; 1963; III, no. 10, pp. 117-119
- Discovering Antiques; Issue No. 41; see correspondence 26 July 1971
- Kunst & Antiquitäten; VI/80, Nov./Dez.
- 600 Magazine
- Hugh Honour; Cabinet Makers and Furniture Designers; London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 1969
- Les collections exceptionnelles des Rothschild: Waddesdon Manor (Hors-série de l'Estampille/l'Objet d'Art, No. 14); Dijon; Éditions Faton; 2004; Page 10 - 21
- 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. 3