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Lot Essay
Joseph Baumhauer, known as Joseph, maître circa 1749.
Jean-Francois Leleu, maître in 1764.
Philippe Caffiéri, sculpteur-ciseleur ordinaire du roi in 1755.
LALIVE DE JULLY’S COQUILLIER
This avant garde masterpiece formed part of the most famous and iconic suite of neo-classical furniture created in the 18th century, the fabled ensemble in ebony and gilt-bronze first conceived for the enlightened amateur Ange-Laurent de Lalive de Jully at the astonishingly early date of circa 1758. Its rigorous, architectural form is inspired by the classical purity of ancient Greece and Rome, with austere pilasters supporting a dynamic frieze of Vitruvian scrolls. The suite caused a sensation in Paris at a time when the whimsy of the Rococo was still en vogue throughout Europe.
THE NEW STYLE
Ange-Laurent de Lalive de Jully (1725-1779) was part of an enlightened group of passionate connoisseurs, architects and artists who fell under the spell of classical antiquity in the 1750s. The group included other amateurs such as the comte de Caylus and Madame Geoffrin, the architects Charles de Wailly, Jean-François de Neufforge and Jean-Laurent Le Geay and designers such as Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain and Jean-Charles Delafosse. They exchanged their new ideas at Jacques-François Blondel’s Ecole des Arts in Paris, an energetic counterpart to the more conservative Académie Royale d’Architecture, and also the French Academy in Rome, an inspirational training ground for this new generation of artists and designers. Spurred on by the exciting discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum they created a striking new style which was every bit as revolutionary as the rise of modernism in the early 20th century.
THE ORIGINAL COMMISSION
Lalive de Jully was the son of the wealthy fermier général Lalive de Bellegarde who was from 1719-20 the Directeur de la Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales and left his son a considerable fortune following his death in 1751. Following the tragically early death of his first wife in 1753, Lalive de Jully remained in the family’s hôtel on the rue Saint Honoré, where his brother Lalive d’Epinay occupied the premier étage, while he had an appartement on the deuxième ètage, which he commissioned the painter and designer Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain to redesign in this revolutionary new ‘antique’ style. As the engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin recalled in his memoirs, Le Lorrain ‘donna des dessins bien lourds pour tous les ornements del’appartment de M. de Lalive, amateur riche et qui dessinait un peu. Ils firent d’autant plus de bruit que M. de Caylus les loua avec enthousiasme. De la nous vinrent les guirlandes et les vases’ and went on to describe how the room overlooking the street was ornamented with ‘médaillons avec chutes de fleurs,… de panneaux en relief de plâtre représentant des vases et ornements’.
Cochin’s description encapsulates the ornamental vocabulary of the new ‘antique’ style, which soon came to be termed the ‘goût grec’ or ‘à la grecque’, with its garlands, vases and reliefs, but also with his reference to the enthusiastic reception from comte de Caylus to these interiors and the fact that Lalive de Jully also ‘dessinait un peu’, he reveals how the new style was such a shared enthusiasm among like-minded, passionate connoisseurs.
Louis-Joseph le Lorrain (1714-1759), the painter and designer, was right on the cutting edge of the new ‘antique’ taste. As was de rigeur, he studied at the Academy in Rome, where he stayed for eight years. He returned to Paris steeped in classical antiquity and became a protegé of the influential amateur and saloniste the comte de Caylus, who recommended him over the painter Oudry to design radically neo-classical wall decorations and furniture for Count Tessin’s country house in Sweden as early as 1754. It is conceivable that de Caylus also introduced Le Lorrain to Lalive de Jully to redecorate his appartement – what is certain is that his immediate and enthusiastic praise gave these groundbreaking interiors instant fame throughout Paris society, leading to a veritable revolution in taste.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LALIVE DE JULLY SUITE
As with Count Tessin, Le Lorrain not only designed the interiors for Lalive de Jully, but also furniture, including perhaps the most radically neo-classical suite of furniture ever conceived, which arrived with an absolutely explosive effect in 1750s Paris. The suite is a dramatic interplay of black and gold, with the ebony ground playing off against dramatically sculptural ‘antique’ bronzes by Philippe Caffiéri, son of the celebrated Rococo bronzier Jacques, with monumental laurel swags, lion masks and friezes of ‘Vitruvian’ scrolls and Greek key. It is more architecture than furniture, and that was the intended effect. The furniture created by the great genius of the Louis XIV era, André-Charles Boulle, with its equally striking use of ebony and sculptural ormolu, was perhaps the initial inspiration, but with a radically different effect, looking to the future as much as being indebted to the past.
The suite included:
-its pièce de resistance, a spectacular eight-legged bureau plat and cartonnier, now in the Musée Condé, château de Chantilly (acquired by the duc d’Aumale at the Hamilton Palace sale in 1882)
- a fauteuil de bureau (present whereabouts unknown)
-a table with porphyry top (sold from the collection of Sydell Miller, Christie’s, New York, 10 June 2021, lot 111 ($846,000)
-a table with verd antique marble top of the same design as this table but longer and narrower and with additional swags (almost certainly recorded in the Royal Palace, Berlin in the early 20th century)
-a coquillier, an enormous cabinet or series of cabinets to house Lalive’s extraordinary collection of shells of which four separate cabinets are currently potentially identified as follows; the cabinet offered here, previously sold from the collection of the marquess of Cholmondeley, Houghton, Christie’s, London, 8 December 1994, lot 80;
one previously in the collection of Emilio Terry, château de Rochecotte, subsequently sold Christie’s, London, 7 December 1995, lot 80, now in a private collection;
two now veneered in mahogany, sold from the collection of Paul Dutasta; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-4 June 1926, lots 177-8, now in a private collection, France.
Although the exact year of the creation of this extraordinary suite is not recorded, the celebrated portrait of Lalive de Jully by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (illustrated here) which was exhibited at the Salon in 1759, depicting him as a veritable new Apollo of the Arts, playing the harp beside the fauteuil de bureau and the bureau plat, indicates that at least these two items from the suite were in existence by this date. It is also known that Le Lorrain was in contact with Lalive at least as early as 1755 as in that year he exhibited in the Salon a picture of Saint Elizabeth, which was intended for the mausoleum of Lalive's first wife, who had died in 1753, therefore a date of circa 1758 is certainly plausible for at least the bureau plat, fauteuil de bureau and the two center tables.
THE INSTALLATION OF THE SUITE IN THE HOTEL ON THE RUE DE MENARS
Lalive de Jully remarried in 1762, to Marie-Elisabeth de Nettine sister-in-law of the fabulously wealthy court banker Jean-Joseph de Laborde and herself from a prominent banking family, and soon after acquired the hôtel of Président Duret de Mesnières near the corner of the rue de Ménars and the rue de Richelieu. He employed the architect Barreau de Chefdeville to create new à la grecque interiors for him, and after they were completed in 1764 Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture française where he makes it clear how the new style he had helped to create had now spread like wildfire in Paris, while he also confirms Le Lorrain, who had tragically died in Russia in 1759, as the designer of the suite of furniture:
‘Ce cabinet est orné de meubles composé dans le style antique, ou, pour me servir du mot dont on abuse si fort actuellement, dans le goût grec ; c’est même depuis l’exécution de ce Cabinet que c’est répandu ce goût d’ouvrages à la grecque…..
…Les meubles ont été exécutés sur les desseins de LE LORAIN [sic]…Cet artiste avoit un goût particulier pour la décoration…’
Given that the coquillier in its complete form was over 20 feet long, it is more likely that it was created expressly for Lalive's new hôtel circa 1762-4, using Le Lorrain's designs from the 1750s, particularly as there would probably not have been sufficient space in his appartement in the family hôtel as the main salon on the rue Saint Honoré was already occupied by the the enfilade of cabinets by Boulle which he had bought from Lazare Duvaux in 1756, while the cabinet flamand was much smaller. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Dezallier d'Argenville, another noted collector of shells, did not mention Lalive's shell collection in the 1757 second edition of his Traité de Conchylogie where he described many of the great shell collections of Paris, including those of the duc de Chaulnes and the duc de Sully, nor did he mention the coquillier in his description of Lalive's collection in rue Saint Honoré in his Voyage Pittoresque de Paris of 1757. However shell-collecting was evidently soon going to be a passion of Lalive's, as his sister-in-law madame d'Epinay wrote in 1758 to the comte de Luc '..Je viens d'acheter le reste du cabinet de M. de Jalabert...tout ce qui est coquillage...naturel pour M. de Jully'- a fascinating insight into the trading of collections between amateurs at the time. It seems likely therefore that Lalive conceived the idea of a coquillier while the other elements of the suite were being created in the late 1750s, but that it was not actually completed until he moved into the new hôtel with its more palatial interiors circa 1762, where he was able to devote the whole of the ground floor to house his collection.
The Boulle bibliothèque mentioned above was placed in the main salon of the hôtel on rue de Ménars, showing like many of Lalive’s contemporaries a love for Boulle furniture which was so important to the aesthetic of the new style, while the coquillier, along with the bureau plat and two tables from the suite, was placed in an adjoining room known as the cabinet flamand as it displayed his extensive collection of Dutch paintings (as had been the case in his previous appartement). The disposition of the doors, niche, chimney, and the mirror facing the chimney meant that the shell cabinets were placed in the back section of the room, on three sides, underneath the three panels that were lined with textile on which were hung the Dutch and Flemish paintings The décor of the room was designed à la grecque by the architect François-Dominique Barreau de Chefdeville (1725-1765) with Ionic columns and pilasters, and a mirror facing a white marble fireplace which was mounted with gilt-bronze lion-masks, possibly executed by Philippe Caffiéri as with the celebrated suite of furniture. Next to the fireplace, opposite the entrance, Lalive placed Augustin Pajou's 'Allegory of Painting,' which stood in a niche on a gilt-channeled semi-circular pedestal, while above the niche and the entrance door, he placed two further bas-reliefs by Pajou emblematic of painting and sculpture.
By 1764, the alterations were completed, and Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture Françoise:
[j]’ai rassamblé tous les tableaux étrangers dans un seul Cabinet qui termine l’appartement. Ce Cabinet est orné de meubles composés dans le style antique, ou, pour me servir de mot dont on abuse si fort actuellement, dans le goût grec…
La décoration de ce Cabinet a été composée, dessinée & conduite par M. BAROS, Architecte, dont les talens ne demandent que des occasions pour acquérir la célébrité qu’ils méritent. Les meubles ont été exécutés sur les dessins de LE LORAIN, Peintre de l’Académie, mort depuis peu d’années en Russie, où il avoit été appellé, pour être premier Peintre de l’Impératrice. Cet Artiste avoit un goût particulier pour la décoration.
Sadly, however, Lalive de Jully became ill and depressed, and his wife was forced to sell his collection. The sale began on 5 March 1770 and lasted until 16 March, with the coquillier included in the catalogue as lot 268 on 9 March, with the following description:
Un corps d’armoire qui servait de coquillier, compose de quatre portes de face & de deux fur chaque côté, garnies de glaces qui ont chacune 16 pouces de haut, fur 13 pouces; le dessus est en forme de pupitre, & a douze portes garnies aussi de glace de 12 pouces de haut, fur 13 pouces. Les corps d’architecture, la fifre & les portes, sont enrichis de chutes de laurier & de chênes, baguettes nouées avec des rubans, postes & fleurons, & canaux. Le tout porte 22 pieds 4 pouces sur 2 pieds 10 pouces 6 lignes dans sa plus grande hauteur: la profondeur est de 18 pouces.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE COQUIILIER
The coquillier remained unsold and was acquired by the Maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville, a passionate conchologist, who had acquired Lalive's hôtel a month before, together with a part of the picture collection. His tenure was relatively short lived, however, as in 1785 the maréchal acquired the hôtel in the rue d'Artois from the maréchale de Mirepoix. The Maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville died in the rue d'Artois hôtel on 6 June 1789. In the inventory of the grand cabinet au premier étage taken following the maréchal's death the expert Pierre Rémy recorded;
quatre bas d'armoires et deux encoignures propre à enfermer de l'histoire naturelle; le tout coquillier plaqué en bois d'ébéne richement garni de frise et autres ornements en bronze doré. Les vantaux à panneaux de glace au nombre de 26 prisé 720 livres.
Following the description in the 1770 sale, it has long been assumed that the coquillier originally formed one long cabinet which was then broken up into a series of cabinets by Choiseul-Stainville. However a detailed examination of the Houghton/Getty cabinet has revealed the probability that the central portion was in fact originally a freestanding smaller cabinet, indicated by the presence of the traces of ebony veneers to its sides (now concealed by the outer sections of the cabinet), and the original feet to the underside, leading to the conclusion that the coquillier was originally conceived as a series of cabinets of varying sizes, including the encoignures mentioned in the 1789 inventory. This would also follow the format of the Boulle bibliothèque in the main salon, which was also conceived as a series of cabinets including encoignures, emphasizing again the importance of Boulle to Le Lorrain and other avant garde neo-classical designers.
A further clue to the original form of the coquillier could be provided by the fascinating and enigmatic group of four drawings attributed to J. Houdan from the Boulton archive at Great Tew, which have been discussed by Hugh Roberts, loc. cit. Three of the Tew drawings repeat the etchings in the Victoria and Albert Museum which Simon Jervis has attributed to Lalive de Jully himself. Two unknown suites of early neo-classical designs', The Burlington Magazine, June 1984, pp. 343-47, while the fourth shows a front view of part of the coquillier. The Tew drawings probably date from circa 1764 when the coquillier is first recorded and perhaps duplicates missing drawings by Le Lorrain recording the general appearance and impact of Lalive's furniture. These drawing clearly show the additional superstructure with glazed slant- front vitrine described in the 1770 catalogue description, subsequently presumably removed by Choiseul-Stainville.
The discovery in 1994 of Joseph's stamp on the present coquillier, together with the table also stamped by Joseph sold recently at Christie’s from the Sydell Miller collection, confirms the attribution to Joseph of Lalive's furniture which was first suggested by J.-D. Augarde in his article '1749, Joseph Baumhauer, Ebéniste du Roi', L'Estampille, June 1987, pp. 14-45 (the Lalive furniture discussed and illustrated pp. 24-27, figs. 12, 16 and 39.) The presence of Leleu’s stamp indicates that he undertook alterations to the coquillier, either for Lalive at some stage prior to the 1770 sale, or subsequently for Choiseul-Stainville. This is made all the more likely as Leleu only gained his maîtrise in 1764, after the coquillier was completed, and worked both for several members of Lalive’s wife’s family, including her brothers-in-law the marquis de Laborde and Micault d’Harvelay, and also for Choiseul-Stainville- in fact Leleu's associate and son-in-law Stadler was among the creditors of the maréchal in 1789. The huge size and site-specific nature of the coquillier makes it natural that it should be altered to fit new locations, while its original upper sections with slant-fronted glazed vitrines were perhaps considered too distracting for a picture gallery, making the current form all the more usable.
SIR PHILIP SASSOON
Sir Philip Sassoon (1888-1939) was one of the most remarkable Englishmen of his day. A Member of Parliament from the age of twenty-three, he also served as Private Secretary to both General Haig (1915-19) and to Lloyd George (1920-22), and as Secretary of State for Air (from 1924) and Commissioner of Works (1937). He was also Chairman of The Trustees of the National Gallery and a Trustee of the Tate Gallery and the Wallace Collection. The fortune which he inherited in his twenties from his father and Rothschild grandparents also permitted him to deploy his considerable energies as a host, aviator and patron of the arts. He completely remodeled the two houses which he had inherited, 25 Park Lane, London (where this cabinet is recorded pre-1927 and in 1939), and Trent Park, Hertfordshire and built from scratch a third, Port Lympne, Kent, begun by Sir Herbert Baker in about 1912 and completed by Philip Tilden in 1918-21. It provided a suitable setting for the house parties that were held there and is now recognized as one of the great English country houses of the twentieth century.
HOUGHTON HALL
The marriage of Sybil Sassoon (1894-1989), daughter of Sir Edward Albert Sassoon (1856-1912), 2nd Bt., and Baroness Aline de Rothschild (1856-1909), in 1913 to George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley (1883-1968), greatly enhanced the wealth of the Cholmondeley family. Sybil was not only a member of two of the most influential banking families, the Sassoons, who have their origins in Baghdad, and the French branch of the Rothschilds, but also inherited the wealth and collections, probably including the present cabinet, of her brother Sir Philip Sassoon, 3rd Bt. This prosperity is reflected in the collections of the various Cholmondeley houses, particularly Houghton Hall in Norfolk, which was built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), Britain's first Prime Minister. Building on the magnificent house commenced in 1722 to designs by James Gibbs and William Kent. Sir Robert Walpole's collections of fine and decorative arts were the cause of much acclaim as well as envy.
Christie’s would like to thank Alexandre Pradère for his invaluable help with this catalogue entry.
Jean-Francois Leleu, maître in 1764.
Philippe Caffiéri, sculpteur-ciseleur ordinaire du roi in 1755.
LALIVE DE JULLY’S COQUILLIER
This avant garde masterpiece formed part of the most famous and iconic suite of neo-classical furniture created in the 18th century, the fabled ensemble in ebony and gilt-bronze first conceived for the enlightened amateur Ange-Laurent de Lalive de Jully at the astonishingly early date of circa 1758. Its rigorous, architectural form is inspired by the classical purity of ancient Greece and Rome, with austere pilasters supporting a dynamic frieze of Vitruvian scrolls. The suite caused a sensation in Paris at a time when the whimsy of the Rococo was still en vogue throughout Europe.
THE NEW STYLE
Ange-Laurent de Lalive de Jully (1725-1779) was part of an enlightened group of passionate connoisseurs, architects and artists who fell under the spell of classical antiquity in the 1750s. The group included other amateurs such as the comte de Caylus and Madame Geoffrin, the architects Charles de Wailly, Jean-François de Neufforge and Jean-Laurent Le Geay and designers such as Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain and Jean-Charles Delafosse. They exchanged their new ideas at Jacques-François Blondel’s Ecole des Arts in Paris, an energetic counterpart to the more conservative Académie Royale d’Architecture, and also the French Academy in Rome, an inspirational training ground for this new generation of artists and designers. Spurred on by the exciting discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum they created a striking new style which was every bit as revolutionary as the rise of modernism in the early 20th century.
THE ORIGINAL COMMISSION
Lalive de Jully was the son of the wealthy fermier général Lalive de Bellegarde who was from 1719-20 the Directeur de la Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales and left his son a considerable fortune following his death in 1751. Following the tragically early death of his first wife in 1753, Lalive de Jully remained in the family’s hôtel on the rue Saint Honoré, where his brother Lalive d’Epinay occupied the premier étage, while he had an appartement on the deuxième ètage, which he commissioned the painter and designer Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain to redesign in this revolutionary new ‘antique’ style. As the engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin recalled in his memoirs, Le Lorrain ‘donna des dessins bien lourds pour tous les ornements del’appartment de M. de Lalive, amateur riche et qui dessinait un peu. Ils firent d’autant plus de bruit que M. de Caylus les loua avec enthousiasme. De la nous vinrent les guirlandes et les vases’ and went on to describe how the room overlooking the street was ornamented with ‘médaillons avec chutes de fleurs,… de panneaux en relief de plâtre représentant des vases et ornements’.
Cochin’s description encapsulates the ornamental vocabulary of the new ‘antique’ style, which soon came to be termed the ‘goût grec’ or ‘à la grecque’, with its garlands, vases and reliefs, but also with his reference to the enthusiastic reception from comte de Caylus to these interiors and the fact that Lalive de Jully also ‘dessinait un peu’, he reveals how the new style was such a shared enthusiasm among like-minded, passionate connoisseurs.
Louis-Joseph le Lorrain (1714-1759), the painter and designer, was right on the cutting edge of the new ‘antique’ taste. As was de rigeur, he studied at the Academy in Rome, where he stayed for eight years. He returned to Paris steeped in classical antiquity and became a protegé of the influential amateur and saloniste the comte de Caylus, who recommended him over the painter Oudry to design radically neo-classical wall decorations and furniture for Count Tessin’s country house in Sweden as early as 1754. It is conceivable that de Caylus also introduced Le Lorrain to Lalive de Jully to redecorate his appartement – what is certain is that his immediate and enthusiastic praise gave these groundbreaking interiors instant fame throughout Paris society, leading to a veritable revolution in taste.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LALIVE DE JULLY SUITE
As with Count Tessin, Le Lorrain not only designed the interiors for Lalive de Jully, but also furniture, including perhaps the most radically neo-classical suite of furniture ever conceived, which arrived with an absolutely explosive effect in 1750s Paris. The suite is a dramatic interplay of black and gold, with the ebony ground playing off against dramatically sculptural ‘antique’ bronzes by Philippe Caffiéri, son of the celebrated Rococo bronzier Jacques, with monumental laurel swags, lion masks and friezes of ‘Vitruvian’ scrolls and Greek key. It is more architecture than furniture, and that was the intended effect. The furniture created by the great genius of the Louis XIV era, André-Charles Boulle, with its equally striking use of ebony and sculptural ormolu, was perhaps the initial inspiration, but with a radically different effect, looking to the future as much as being indebted to the past.
The suite included:
-its pièce de resistance, a spectacular eight-legged bureau plat and cartonnier, now in the Musée Condé, château de Chantilly (acquired by the duc d’Aumale at the Hamilton Palace sale in 1882)
- a fauteuil de bureau (present whereabouts unknown)
-a table with porphyry top (sold from the collection of Sydell Miller, Christie’s, New York, 10 June 2021, lot 111 ($846,000)
-a table with verd antique marble top of the same design as this table but longer and narrower and with additional swags (almost certainly recorded in the Royal Palace, Berlin in the early 20th century)
-a coquillier, an enormous cabinet or series of cabinets to house Lalive’s extraordinary collection of shells of which four separate cabinets are currently potentially identified as follows; the cabinet offered here, previously sold from the collection of the marquess of Cholmondeley, Houghton, Christie’s, London, 8 December 1994, lot 80;
one previously in the collection of Emilio Terry, château de Rochecotte, subsequently sold Christie’s, London, 7 December 1995, lot 80, now in a private collection;
two now veneered in mahogany, sold from the collection of Paul Dutasta; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-4 June 1926, lots 177-8, now in a private collection, France.
Although the exact year of the creation of this extraordinary suite is not recorded, the celebrated portrait of Lalive de Jully by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (illustrated here) which was exhibited at the Salon in 1759, depicting him as a veritable new Apollo of the Arts, playing the harp beside the fauteuil de bureau and the bureau plat, indicates that at least these two items from the suite were in existence by this date. It is also known that Le Lorrain was in contact with Lalive at least as early as 1755 as in that year he exhibited in the Salon a picture of Saint Elizabeth, which was intended for the mausoleum of Lalive's first wife, who had died in 1753, therefore a date of circa 1758 is certainly plausible for at least the bureau plat, fauteuil de bureau and the two center tables.
THE INSTALLATION OF THE SUITE IN THE HOTEL ON THE RUE DE MENARS
Lalive de Jully remarried in 1762, to Marie-Elisabeth de Nettine sister-in-law of the fabulously wealthy court banker Jean-Joseph de Laborde and herself from a prominent banking family, and soon after acquired the hôtel of Président Duret de Mesnières near the corner of the rue de Ménars and the rue de Richelieu. He employed the architect Barreau de Chefdeville to create new à la grecque interiors for him, and after they were completed in 1764 Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture française where he makes it clear how the new style he had helped to create had now spread like wildfire in Paris, while he also confirms Le Lorrain, who had tragically died in Russia in 1759, as the designer of the suite of furniture:
‘Ce cabinet est orné de meubles composé dans le style antique, ou, pour me servir du mot dont on abuse si fort actuellement, dans le goût grec ; c’est même depuis l’exécution de ce Cabinet que c’est répandu ce goût d’ouvrages à la grecque…..
…Les meubles ont été exécutés sur les desseins de LE LORAIN [sic]…Cet artiste avoit un goût particulier pour la décoration…’
Given that the coquillier in its complete form was over 20 feet long, it is more likely that it was created expressly for Lalive's new hôtel circa 1762-4, using Le Lorrain's designs from the 1750s, particularly as there would probably not have been sufficient space in his appartement in the family hôtel as the main salon on the rue Saint Honoré was already occupied by the the enfilade of cabinets by Boulle which he had bought from Lazare Duvaux in 1756, while the cabinet flamand was much smaller. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Dezallier d'Argenville, another noted collector of shells, did not mention Lalive's shell collection in the 1757 second edition of his Traité de Conchylogie where he described many of the great shell collections of Paris, including those of the duc de Chaulnes and the duc de Sully, nor did he mention the coquillier in his description of Lalive's collection in rue Saint Honoré in his Voyage Pittoresque de Paris of 1757. However shell-collecting was evidently soon going to be a passion of Lalive's, as his sister-in-law madame d'Epinay wrote in 1758 to the comte de Luc '..Je viens d'acheter le reste du cabinet de M. de Jalabert...tout ce qui est coquillage...naturel pour M. de Jully'- a fascinating insight into the trading of collections between amateurs at the time. It seems likely therefore that Lalive conceived the idea of a coquillier while the other elements of the suite were being created in the late 1750s, but that it was not actually completed until he moved into the new hôtel with its more palatial interiors circa 1762, where he was able to devote the whole of the ground floor to house his collection.
The Boulle bibliothèque mentioned above was placed in the main salon of the hôtel on rue de Ménars, showing like many of Lalive’s contemporaries a love for Boulle furniture which was so important to the aesthetic of the new style, while the coquillier, along with the bureau plat and two tables from the suite, was placed in an adjoining room known as the cabinet flamand as it displayed his extensive collection of Dutch paintings (as had been the case in his previous appartement). The disposition of the doors, niche, chimney, and the mirror facing the chimney meant that the shell cabinets were placed in the back section of the room, on three sides, underneath the three panels that were lined with textile on which were hung the Dutch and Flemish paintings The décor of the room was designed à la grecque by the architect François-Dominique Barreau de Chefdeville (1725-1765) with Ionic columns and pilasters, and a mirror facing a white marble fireplace which was mounted with gilt-bronze lion-masks, possibly executed by Philippe Caffiéri as with the celebrated suite of furniture. Next to the fireplace, opposite the entrance, Lalive placed Augustin Pajou's 'Allegory of Painting,' which stood in a niche on a gilt-channeled semi-circular pedestal, while above the niche and the entrance door, he placed two further bas-reliefs by Pajou emblematic of painting and sculpture.
By 1764, the alterations were completed, and Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture Françoise:
[j]’ai rassamblé tous les tableaux étrangers dans un seul Cabinet qui termine l’appartement. Ce Cabinet est orné de meubles composés dans le style antique, ou, pour me servir de mot dont on abuse si fort actuellement, dans le goût grec…
La décoration de ce Cabinet a été composée, dessinée & conduite par M. BAROS, Architecte, dont les talens ne demandent que des occasions pour acquérir la célébrité qu’ils méritent. Les meubles ont été exécutés sur les dessins de LE LORAIN, Peintre de l’Académie, mort depuis peu d’années en Russie, où il avoit été appellé, pour être premier Peintre de l’Impératrice. Cet Artiste avoit un goût particulier pour la décoration.
Sadly, however, Lalive de Jully became ill and depressed, and his wife was forced to sell his collection. The sale began on 5 March 1770 and lasted until 16 March, with the coquillier included in the catalogue as lot 268 on 9 March, with the following description:
Un corps d’armoire qui servait de coquillier, compose de quatre portes de face & de deux fur chaque côté, garnies de glaces qui ont chacune 16 pouces de haut, fur 13 pouces; le dessus est en forme de pupitre, & a douze portes garnies aussi de glace de 12 pouces de haut, fur 13 pouces. Les corps d’architecture, la fifre & les portes, sont enrichis de chutes de laurier & de chênes, baguettes nouées avec des rubans, postes & fleurons, & canaux. Le tout porte 22 pieds 4 pouces sur 2 pieds 10 pouces 6 lignes dans sa plus grande hauteur: la profondeur est de 18 pouces.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE COQUIILIER
The coquillier remained unsold and was acquired by the Maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville, a passionate conchologist, who had acquired Lalive's hôtel a month before, together with a part of the picture collection. His tenure was relatively short lived, however, as in 1785 the maréchal acquired the hôtel in the rue d'Artois from the maréchale de Mirepoix. The Maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville died in the rue d'Artois hôtel on 6 June 1789. In the inventory of the grand cabinet au premier étage taken following the maréchal's death the expert Pierre Rémy recorded;
quatre bas d'armoires et deux encoignures propre à enfermer de l'histoire naturelle; le tout coquillier plaqué en bois d'ébéne richement garni de frise et autres ornements en bronze doré. Les vantaux à panneaux de glace au nombre de 26 prisé 720 livres.
Following the description in the 1770 sale, it has long been assumed that the coquillier originally formed one long cabinet which was then broken up into a series of cabinets by Choiseul-Stainville. However a detailed examination of the Houghton/Getty cabinet has revealed the probability that the central portion was in fact originally a freestanding smaller cabinet, indicated by the presence of the traces of ebony veneers to its sides (now concealed by the outer sections of the cabinet), and the original feet to the underside, leading to the conclusion that the coquillier was originally conceived as a series of cabinets of varying sizes, including the encoignures mentioned in the 1789 inventory. This would also follow the format of the Boulle bibliothèque in the main salon, which was also conceived as a series of cabinets including encoignures, emphasizing again the importance of Boulle to Le Lorrain and other avant garde neo-classical designers.
A further clue to the original form of the coquillier could be provided by the fascinating and enigmatic group of four drawings attributed to J. Houdan from the Boulton archive at Great Tew, which have been discussed by Hugh Roberts, loc. cit. Three of the Tew drawings repeat the etchings in the Victoria and Albert Museum which Simon Jervis has attributed to Lalive de Jully himself. Two unknown suites of early neo-classical designs', The Burlington Magazine, June 1984, pp. 343-47, while the fourth shows a front view of part of the coquillier. The Tew drawings probably date from circa 1764 when the coquillier is first recorded and perhaps duplicates missing drawings by Le Lorrain recording the general appearance and impact of Lalive's furniture. These drawing clearly show the additional superstructure with glazed slant- front vitrine described in the 1770 catalogue description, subsequently presumably removed by Choiseul-Stainville.
The discovery in 1994 of Joseph's stamp on the present coquillier, together with the table also stamped by Joseph sold recently at Christie’s from the Sydell Miller collection, confirms the attribution to Joseph of Lalive's furniture which was first suggested by J.-D. Augarde in his article '1749, Joseph Baumhauer, Ebéniste du Roi', L'Estampille, June 1987, pp. 14-45 (the Lalive furniture discussed and illustrated pp. 24-27, figs. 12, 16 and 39.) The presence of Leleu’s stamp indicates that he undertook alterations to the coquillier, either for Lalive at some stage prior to the 1770 sale, or subsequently for Choiseul-Stainville. This is made all the more likely as Leleu only gained his maîtrise in 1764, after the coquillier was completed, and worked both for several members of Lalive’s wife’s family, including her brothers-in-law the marquis de Laborde and Micault d’Harvelay, and also for Choiseul-Stainville- in fact Leleu's associate and son-in-law Stadler was among the creditors of the maréchal in 1789. The huge size and site-specific nature of the coquillier makes it natural that it should be altered to fit new locations, while its original upper sections with slant-fronted glazed vitrines were perhaps considered too distracting for a picture gallery, making the current form all the more usable.
SIR PHILIP SASSOON
Sir Philip Sassoon (1888-1939) was one of the most remarkable Englishmen of his day. A Member of Parliament from the age of twenty-three, he also served as Private Secretary to both General Haig (1915-19) and to Lloyd George (1920-22), and as Secretary of State for Air (from 1924) and Commissioner of Works (1937). He was also Chairman of The Trustees of the National Gallery and a Trustee of the Tate Gallery and the Wallace Collection. The fortune which he inherited in his twenties from his father and Rothschild grandparents also permitted him to deploy his considerable energies as a host, aviator and patron of the arts. He completely remodeled the two houses which he had inherited, 25 Park Lane, London (where this cabinet is recorded pre-1927 and in 1939), and Trent Park, Hertfordshire and built from scratch a third, Port Lympne, Kent, begun by Sir Herbert Baker in about 1912 and completed by Philip Tilden in 1918-21. It provided a suitable setting for the house parties that were held there and is now recognized as one of the great English country houses of the twentieth century.
HOUGHTON HALL
The marriage of Sybil Sassoon (1894-1989), daughter of Sir Edward Albert Sassoon (1856-1912), 2nd Bt., and Baroness Aline de Rothschild (1856-1909), in 1913 to George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley (1883-1968), greatly enhanced the wealth of the Cholmondeley family. Sybil was not only a member of two of the most influential banking families, the Sassoons, who have their origins in Baghdad, and the French branch of the Rothschilds, but also inherited the wealth and collections, probably including the present cabinet, of her brother Sir Philip Sassoon, 3rd Bt. This prosperity is reflected in the collections of the various Cholmondeley houses, particularly Houghton Hall in Norfolk, which was built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), Britain's first Prime Minister. Building on the magnificent house commenced in 1722 to designs by James Gibbs and William Kent. Sir Robert Walpole's collections of fine and decorative arts were the cause of much acclaim as well as envy.
Christie’s would like to thank Alexandre Pradère for his invaluable help with this catalogue entry.