A mahogany, mahogany veneer, wood with an imitation... Lot 285

A mahogany, mahogany veneer, wood with an imitation bronze patina and gilded wood resting bed, with slightly overturned bedside tables decorated with a double turned baluster carved with water leaves, the "plank" hollowed out with a medallion with a mascaron, framed by a rhombus with rosettes in the spandrels. The "flasks" are adorned with winged griffins with a foliage scroll in their gules ending in a succession of palmettes. The right belt presents a rhombus decorated with palmettes at the ends. It rests on four hocked feet with lion claws. Stamped B. Molitor 1799-1807. The frame decoration H: 84,5 W: 163,5 D: 64 cm (some restorations, small cracks and wear to the gilding) The architecture and the carved decoration of this bed of rest are inspired by Antiquity and characteristic of the production of Bernard Molitor from the end of the XVIIIth century. The decorative repertoire, the lightness of the lines, the great finesse of execution, are perhaps the result of a collaboration between Molitor and the carpenter Demay. The latter was one of Molitor's suppliers in 1796 and a curule armchair stamped Demay (inv.MB 289), kept in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, has winged griffin motifs similar to those of Molitor. Over the centuries, "returns to antiquity" have periodically multiplied, but the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1750s, as well as the publications of the works of Count Caylus in France, Piranesi in Italy, James Stuart in England and Winckelman in Germany, accentuated the interest in the civilizations and decorations of ancient Rome. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc and the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-Léonard Fontaine were true ambassadors of this stylistic evolution: "One would flatter oneself in vain to find forms preferable to those that the ancients have transmitted to us "1 is one of the five essential points recounted in the preface of the "Recueil de décorations intérieures", a true spiritual manifesto. Bernard Molitor benefits from Ulrich Leben's thorough study2. Of the resting beds sold and the eleven listed in Ulrich Leben's book, only two, including the one we are presenting, are stamped. This pedestal table is also published and reproduced in L'ouvrage sur Molitor 3 and in Denise Ledoux-Lebard's book.4 Also to be mentioned is the exhibition "Pierres précieuses de Paris" Paris 1946, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Pavillon de Marsan.An anonymous oil on canvas, preserved in the Marmottan Museum in Paris, represents Napoleon's mother, Laetitia Bonaparte, sitting on a very similar bed. A cabinetmaker born in Luxembourg, MOLITOR (1755-1833), established himself in Paris in the mid 1770s. After a difficult start, he received his master's degree in 1787 and remained active until 1819, going through all the economic difficulties of these decades. His high quality production is characterized by its sobriety and harmonious proportions. He received a few royal commissions, including a mahogany parquet floor for Marie-Antoinette's cabinet in Fontainebleau, and essentially supplied members of the French and foreign nobility in particular: the Count of Chartres, the Polignacs, the Marquis Lafayette, Baron de Staël Holstein, ambassador of the King of Sweden, Count Fernand Nuñez, ambassador of the King of Spain, who in 1788 made purchases for the royal residences in Madrid... 1- Percier and Fontaine, Recueil de décorations intérieures, 1812, in préliminaire p.13. 2- Ulrich Leben, Molitor, Ebéniste de Louis XVI à Louis XVIII, Paris, 1992, pp. 173-174. 3- Op. cit. P: 204. 4- D. Ledoux Lebard, Les Ebénistes du XIXème siècle, Editions de l'Amateur, Paris, 1984, p. 490. B. MOLITOR DAYBED IN MAHOGANY, MAHOGANY VENEER, WOOD PAINTED IN IMITATION OF BRONZE AND GILDED WOOD, STAMPED B. MOLITOR 1799-1807