Pierre-Antoine Bellangé, maître in 1788.

This spectacular example of seat furniture exemplifies menuiserie from the Empire period at its most opulent, with à l'antique, classically inspired forms and a rich array of ornamental details such as laurel leaves and palmettes.

Pierre-Antoine Bellangé was one of the most important fournisseurs to the court of Emperor Napoleon, supplying important suites of mobilier for many of the Imperial palaces, including Saint Cloud and the Tuileries. Following the Restoration of the monarchy his work continued to be in demand and he was made ébéniste breveté du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne. In 1821 his work was praised for "La qualité, la richesse et la grâce des objets debénisterie", while one of his most important commissions from that period was for the château de Saint-Ouen of for the Comtesse de Cayla, maîtresse en titre of Louis XVIII.

Two celebrated suites of mobilier by Bellangé are closely related to the suite offered here, with similar distinctive arm supports, sabre-form back legs and laurel-carved frames. One was supplied to Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, for the Salon des Prud'hon in the Hôtel de Beauharnais, Paris, now the German Embassy (illustrated in C. Frégnac, The Great Houses of Paris, Paris, 1977, pp. 142-143). The second closely related suite was remarkably ordered by President James Monroe to furnish the Oval or Blue Room in the White House, and was acquired in 1817 through the American decorating firm of Russell and La Farge, who described Bellangé as the "first Ebeneste[sic] in Paris". Monroe had lived in Paris in the 1790's and was sent on a second mission to Paris in 1803, where he much admired the new classically inspired furniture of the Empire period, a style he thought ideal to furnish the Presidential residence in Washington (see B.C. Monkman, The White House, Washington, 2000, pp. 60-61).