After GUILLAUME BENNEMAN (c.1785-c.1792) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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178.00cm wide    95.00cm high    65.00cm deep (70.08 inches wide  37.40 inches high  25.59 inches deep)

Pierre Kjellberg: ‘Mobilier Français du XVIIIe Siécle;’ Paris, 1998, p. 57.
Jean Nicolay: ‘Maîtres Ébénistes Français;’ Paris, 1982, p. 49.
Meuvret, J.: ‘French Cabinet Makers of the Eighteenth Century’, 1963, p. 309.

The shaped white and grey veined marble top with projecting corners above two frieze drawers with panels of scrolling foliate acanthus framing a lion's head above two cupboard doors decorated with a demi-lune panel of applied gilt-bronze scrolling acanthus with a ribbon-hung garland above a central circular gilt-bronze plaque of a mother and child in the manner of Clodion framed by corresponding acanthus spandrels. The sides similarly embellished and the whole put down on toupie feet with gilt- bronze palmette sabots.

The model this commode was based on was designed by Stockel et Benneman and destined for the bedroom of Marie-Antoinette at Fontainbleau, it resides today in the Musée du Louvre.

Guillaume Benneman was the chief ébéniste to Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette from 1786 to 1792, producing many fine pieces for the Royal Chateaux at Versailles and Fontainebleau under the directorship of Jean Hauré until 1788 and later under Thierry de Ville d'Avray. Benneman was influential in introducing a more disciplined neoclassical approach to furniture design with emphasis on pure outlines and architectural references that were to predominate under the Consulat and Empire.