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An extremely fine Empire gilt bronze mounted mahogany lit attributed to Jacob Frères with magnificent bronzes attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire, the outward curved headboard mounted with a fabulous gilt bronze winged female aquatic monster issuing foliate scrolls above a panelled frieze mounted with rosettes above tapering ring turned columnar legs on turned cast feet, with a leopard print covered mattress and matching buttoned bolster
Paris, date circa 1800
Length 215 cm, depth 127 cm, height of headboard 89 cm.
As in all furniture designs during the Directoire and Empire years the main inspiration came from the Ancien Regime, generally derived from images on painted vases. Thus when it came to beds, gone were the heavier and more flamboyant four-posters and instead beds, like sofas and couches came to evoke the Antique style. Some, as here simply had a rolling headboard while others had a matching symmetrical arrangement at the foot of the bed to evoke a boat-shape form and thus were known as lits en bateau.
The leaders in the new style were Percier and Fontaine, who were commissioned by Napoleon to set about a lavish refurbishment programme for many of the royal residences, many of which had been partially destroyed during the upheavals of the Revolution. The bourgeoisie were equally keen to spend money of furniture in their desire to appear more established. Among many commissions, Percier decorated the private residence of Monsieur and Madame Récamier using mahogany, gilding and classical motifs that took inspiration from Egypt as well as Greece and Rome.
The present bed is a perfect example of the new Empire style; in fact the overall style and particularly the turned legs compare admirably with those of Mme Récamier’s bed, as featured in her famous but unfinished portrait by the Neo-classical painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) (1800; Musée du Louvre, Paris). The present example was almost certainly made by the renowned Parisian ébénistes Jacob Frères, who supplied a number of items for Mme Récamier’s Parisian hôtel at rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin including a mahogany and citronnier chaise longue circa 1798 (Musée du Louvre, illustrated in Denise Ledoux-Lebard, “Le Mobilier Français du XIXe Siècle”, 2000, p. 300), which also has ring turned legs, very similar to those featured here.
This piece however is further embellished with the most sumptuous gilt bronze mounts, which on account of their style and quality were almost certainly made by the esteemed bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843). Thomire often provided mounts for François-Honoré-Georges Jacob, known as Jacob-Desmalter (1770-1841) who with his brother Georges II (1768-1803) ran the firm Jacob Frères from 1796 until the latter’s death in1803. Thereafter it was restyled Jacob-Desmalter et Cie and was run by Jacob-Desmalter and his father, the famous menusier Georges Jacob (1739-1814). Jacob Frères are credited as having made a number of Empire style beds, including a mahogany and ebony lit en bateau circa 1800-03 for Pauline Borghèse at Château de Neuilly and another designed by Berthault, decorated with swan mounts (illustrated, ibid. pp. 269 and 278).
Interestingly the style of the present mounts correspond in theme to those adorning a very ornate Jacob Frères commode (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) with mounts attributed to Thomire featuring Venus and various sea creatures in addition to Classical caryatid supports. In this instance the headboard is decorated with an elaborate sea creature that resembles a hippocampus (a fabulous marine creature, having the fore parts of a horse and hind parts of a fish, which according to mythology was used to pull the chariot of Neptune and Galatea across the oceans). However here the female creature has the head and wings of an Egyptian sphinx. In addition to aquatic monsters, Empire headboards beds were also often decorated with chimera, griffins or sphinxes.
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