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Kahn, Paris
A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Marquetry and Parquetry Commode
£68,000
A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Marquetry and Parquetry Commode, By Kahn, Paris, After The Model By Jean Henri Riesener. The pink and grey veined...
Dimensions
Height: 90 cm (36 in)Width: 168 cm (67 in)
Depth: 63.5 cm (25 in)
Weight: 150 kg
PrintDescription
A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Marquetry and Parquetry Commode, By Kahn, Paris, After The Model By Jean Henri Riesener.
The pink and grey veined marble top above breakfront facade with three frieze-drawers with scrolling foliage. The cupboard door with trapezoid shaped panel with a marquetry trompe l’oeil of a ewer, instruments and foliage. Flanked by panels and out-swept sides of sunflower-filled trellis parquetry. The interior with a shelf. The apron with a large scrolled acanthus gilt-bronze centre mount. On scroll feet.
Incised ‘L. KAHN’ to the back of the mounts.
France, Circa 1900.
Riesener was Marie Antoinette’s preferred cabinetmaker and was incontestably the greatest master of Louis XVI furniture. Riesener supplied the first commode of this type to Louis XVI for his ‘cabinet intérieur’ at the château de Fontainebleau in 1776. The king was evidently delighted by the piece, for it seems to have been moved shortly after to the château de Versailles, ultimately remaining there in the bibliothèque of King Louis XVI until it was sold during the revolution in 1794.
The commode by Riesener is today displayed in Queen Marie Antoinette’s bedroom at the château de Fontainebleau (Image © RMN).
In 1778 a further commode was commissioned and others were made, including a similar example supplied to the Comtesse de Provence, now at Waddesdon Manor (G. de Bellaigue, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Furniture and Gilt Bronzes, Fribourg, 1974, I, pp. 239-246, no. 53). Another by way of William Beckford (1760 – 1844) and the 10th Duke of Hamilton (d. 1852), entered the Collection of Barons Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild, from which it sold at auction in London in July 1999 for £7,041,000, returning to Versailles.
The model was considered one of Riesener’s masterpieces and an exemplar of ‘le Style Louis XVI’. The straight lines, heavy and rich bronzework and the remarkable marquetry on the trapezoid central part, are characteristic of the cabinetmaker’s Neo-Classical style. Riesener’s commode was so admired and famous in the nineteenth century that the great ébénistes of the day replicated it with phenomenal exactitude. This was aided by the exhibition of the model (1862) and early photographic publication in, notably, E. Williamson, Les Meubles D’Art du Mobilier National, Paris, 1880.
Replicas are recorded firstly by Charles-Guillaume Winckelsen and his successor Henry Dasson, then Fourdinois and later in the nineteenth century by Alfred Beurdeley, Cuienières, François Linke and, as here, Linke’s contemporary Kahn.
(For an example by François Linke see Adrian Alan Ref No :B72541).
Date
circa 1900
Origin
France
Medium
Marquetry and Gilt-Bronze
Signature
Incised ‘L. KAHN’ to the back of the mounts.
Kahn, E. and Kahn, L.
Édouard Kahn is recorded at 20-22 rue Saint-Bernard in 1905, close to the faubourg Saint-Antoine furniture making district where François Linke and his contemporaries had their workshops. Whereas a Léon Kahn is listed in 1900 as a ‘ciseleur sur métaux’ at 3 rue Debelleyme in the main area for bronze makers. It can be supposed that the two were related.
Gilt-bronze mounts signed on the reverse ‘KAHN’ are widely recorded on French furniture made at this time, including on pieces after celebrated 18th century models by Weisweiler, Benneman and Cressent. E. Kahn also had premises in London as ‘Manufacturers of Furniture and Upholstery’ and advertised François Linke’s Grand Bureau in his London publicity, underscoring the close associations between makers of the day.
Literature:
Payne, Christopher. Paris Furniture – the luxury market of the 19th century, Éditions Monelle Hayot, (Paris), 2018; p. 405.
Payne, Christopher, Paris Furniture – the luxury market of the 19th century, Éditions Monelle Hayot, (Paris), 2018; p. 197.
