PROBABLY POLISH, CIRCA 1800

The inscription Radziwilimonty Księcia Leon Radziwill to the underside of one of the drawers of this bonheur de jour suggests that this lot was once in the collection of the princely Polish Radziwill family. Radziwilimonty likely indicates a village in Belarus and now known as Krasnaya Zvezda, where the Radziwill family owned a manor house built in the Neoclassical taste. The name Księcia, or prince, Leon Radziwill could refer to either to Leon Hieronim Radziwill (1808-1885) or Léon Radziwill (1880-1927). The former had a successful and celebrated military and diplomatic career and was the eleventh ordinate of Kleck, the region where Radziwilmonty lays. Born and raised in France, the latter, Léon "Loch" Radziwill was a veritable "jetsetter" of his time whose father had major shares in the Casino de Monte Carlo and on whom Marcel Proust based the character of Robert de Saint-Loup in his work In Search of Lost Time. Loch was an avid polo player and had a profound commitment to perpetuate the memory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He devoted much of his energy and time to the restoration and conservation of the château d'Ermenonville, the place of his birth. Throughout his life, which was cut short by murder in Monte Carlo, he considered himself Polish as much as French but complained that "C'est agaçant, quand je suis en Pologne, les gens me disent: Vous êtes Français et quand je suis en France, on me dit: Vous êtes Polonais!"
With its elegant and simple lines and exotic timber enriched with contrasting polychrome-decorated panels, this bonheur de jour is similar to a number of furnishings popular in Poland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The painted panels make this lot distinctively Polish and similar works can be found in both Polish public and international private collections: for a mahogany cabinet with polychrome figural panels and a bonheur de jour inset with white-painted plaques with floral designs see B. Maszkowska, Z dziejów polskiego meblarstwa okresu óswiecenia, Wroclaw, 1956, p. 51, pl. IV and fig. 72, respectively. A related pair of kingwood commodes attributed to a Polish workshop with white panels decorated with landscapes was formerly in the collection of Mrs. Marella Agnelli, see Sotheby's, New York, 23 October 2004, lot 132.