ATTRIBTUED TO FRANCOIS-GEORGES-HONORE JACOB-DESMALTER, CIRCA 1810

With its bold design derived from the works of Percier and Fontaine and provenance with one of the most charismatic families of 19^th century France, this impressive bureau plat embodies a confident and innovative moment in the history of France.

The end supports carved with scrolls and palmettes reflect the influence of contemporary discoveries of ancient designs and relate directly to the works of Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. Plate XVI of their Recueil de decorations, published from 1801-1812, depicts a table with the same end supports as the present lot and the caption ‘Face et profil d’une Table exécutée pour les frères Jacob’, explicitly linking this design with the workshop of François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter which traded until 1803 under the Jacob Frères name. The attribution to Jacob-Desmalter is tangibly supported by a number of related bureaux, including a mechanical desk supplied by Jacob-Desmalter in 1811 for Napoleon’s library at the château de Compiègne which has the same carved decoration and legs as our desk but with a narrower plinth. A further mechanical desk of a slightly different design but similar form and plinth was supplied by Jacob-Desmalter in 1811 for Napoleon’s apartment at the château de Fontainebleau (F481C). Two related bureaux on the Parisian market attributed to Jacob-Desmalter also support this attribution. One has the same plinth and end supports but with the addition of ormolu mounts to the frieze while the second has open end supports and ormolu mounts but similar feet and form.

The bureau plat was in the library of the château de Villepreux, Yvelines from the early 19^th century until 2016 and a large number of other pieces by the Jacob Frères/ Desmalter workshops in the château, much of it stamped, indicates that the firm was commissioned to supply furniture for the château, most likely around 1811 when the house was acquired by Thomas Jean Baptiste Merlin (1755-1826). Merlin was married to Marie Françoise Bocquet (1753-1816) whose father Louis Michel Bocquet (1798-1807) owned the lands of Villepreux, called Grand’Maison but not the château itself. The couple united the lands with the château in 1811 and in 1826 the entire domain was inherited by Marie Françoise’s daughter, Augustine Bertin de Veaux (1780-1849), wife of Louis François Bertin de Veaux, a journalist, deputy, Councillor of State and peer of France. Bertin de Veaux’s brother Louis-François Bertin (1766-1841) founded the famous royalist newspaper the Journal des débats which courted a politically provocative stance under the Empire and became France’s most widely-read newspaper under the Restoration. The latter Bertin (called Bertin l'Aîné) was depicted in a famous painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, currently preserved in the Louvre (inv. RF 1071). Under the Bertin de Veaux family, the château de Villepreux played host to France’s literary and social elite.