Jean-Pierre Latz, ébéniste privilegié du Roi before 1741.
Léonard Boudin, maître 1761.

These rich and important commodes are part of a small corpus by the eminent ébéniste Jean-Pierre Latz, only a few of which bear his stamp.They are almost identical, except the veneer on the doors, to a pair currently preserved in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris (inv. MB718-1), stamped by Latz and Boudin. Although unstamped by Latz (1691-1754), the present encoignures bear the stamp of the retailer and ébéniste Léonard Boudin. Boudin became maître some seven years after Latz's death and regularly stamped the pieces he sold. It appears that he retailed both these and the Carnavalet encoignures. Another pair of almost identical encoignures stamped by Latz are illustrated A. Pradère, Les Ébénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, p. 157, fig. 130).

Latz was born near Cologne around 1691 and settled in Paris by 1719. He became naturalised in 1736 and obtained the warrant of ébéniste privilégié du roi before 1741. Latz's work is characterised by bold free-moving sculptural forms richly decorated with exuberant gilt-bronze mounts. He is one of the few ébénistes to whom furniture can confidently be attributed on the basis of the ormolu mounts. It is known that he cast and chased his own ormolu mounts on his premises in contravention of guild rules and a report written in 1749 following the seizure of ormolu mounts from his workshop at the instigation of the bronze-caster's guild lists 2,288 different bronze models and parts.

THE PROVENANCE

These encoignures are further distinguished by their illustrious provenance with one of the greatest collectors of the 19th century, Alfred de Rothschild (1842-1918). Considered alongside his cousin Ferdinand de Rothschild as the most important British collector of French art in the late 19th century, Alfred was described as ‘the finest amateur judge of French 18th-century art in England’ (Barbara Lasic, Furniture History, Vol. 40 (2004), p. 135). He assembled a magnificent collection at his home in Buckinghamshire, Halton House. On Alfred’s death Halton House passed to his nephew Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1882-1918) who sold it to the RAF and in 1919 purchased the Exbury estate in Hampshire.