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Lot Essay
Guillaume Benneman, maître in 1785.
This eyecatching bureau plat by Benneman, with its fully sculpted gilt-bronze supports of putti wrapped in drapery, represents a fascinating puzzle. The putti are clearly inspired by the closely related uprights on the celebrated fireplace sculpted in white marble and ormolu by Louis-Simon Boizot and Pierre Gouthière for the salon of Madame du Barry at the château de Fontainebleau. However this fireplace was executed in 1772, fully thirteen years before Benneman became maître, and fourteen years before he was appointed ébéniste de la couronne in 1786. It is also interesting to note that Madame du Barry’s appartement at Fontainebleau was sadly short lived, being demolished soon after Louis XV’s death in 1774, and the fireplace was reinstalled in Louis XVI’s bibliothèque at Versailles, where it remains today. It is certainly natural that Benneman would have been familiar with the fireplace at Versailles through his extensive work for the crown and therefore used it as the basis for the design of the uprights of his bureau, which is likely originally to have been in the form of a cylinder bureau. Benneman continued to work into the 1790’s, and the use of sculptural gilt-bronze caryatids (although admittedly usually on a smaller scale than the uprights on this bureau), was a recurrent leitmotif of his work in that period, for instance on a commode and secretaire supplied by Benneman to the Hermitage Palace, St. Petersburg in 1790 (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, pp. 404-5. It is also interesting to note that Benneman collaborated with Louis-Simon Boizot as late as 1787, on a secretaire à abattant delivered to Louis XVI for Compiègne in 1787, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1971.206.17). The mounts of this secretaire were modelled by Boizot, cast by Forestier and chased by Thomire, leading to the possibility that they might also have created the remarkable uprights on the bureau offered here.
This eyecatching bureau plat by Benneman, with its fully sculpted gilt-bronze supports of putti wrapped in drapery, represents a fascinating puzzle. The putti are clearly inspired by the closely related uprights on the celebrated fireplace sculpted in white marble and ormolu by Louis-Simon Boizot and Pierre Gouthière for the salon of Madame du Barry at the château de Fontainebleau. However this fireplace was executed in 1772, fully thirteen years before Benneman became maître, and fourteen years before he was appointed ébéniste de la couronne in 1786. It is also interesting to note that Madame du Barry’s appartement at Fontainebleau was sadly short lived, being demolished soon after Louis XV’s death in 1774, and the fireplace was reinstalled in Louis XVI’s bibliothèque at Versailles, where it remains today. It is certainly natural that Benneman would have been familiar with the fireplace at Versailles through his extensive work for the crown and therefore used it as the basis for the design of the uprights of his bureau, which is likely originally to have been in the form of a cylinder bureau. Benneman continued to work into the 1790’s, and the use of sculptural gilt-bronze caryatids (although admittedly usually on a smaller scale than the uprights on this bureau), was a recurrent leitmotif of his work in that period, for instance on a commode and secretaire supplied by Benneman to the Hermitage Palace, St. Petersburg in 1790 (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, pp. 404-5. It is also interesting to note that Benneman collaborated with Louis-Simon Boizot as late as 1787, on a secretaire à abattant delivered to Louis XVI for Compiègne in 1787, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1971.206.17). The mounts of this secretaire were modelled by Boizot, cast by Forestier and chased by Thomire, leading to the possibility that they might also have created the remarkable uprights on the bureau offered here.