A GILT BRONZE-MOUNTED BOULLE MARQUETRY AND EBONY MEUBLE D'APPUI STAMPED E. LEVASSEUR , LATE 18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Etienne Levasseur was based in the Rue Saint-Antoine at the shopfront Au Cadran bleu, and in addition to producing work in lacquer and mahogany in the most up-to-date Louis XVI taste, he was a leading proponent of furniture veneered in Boulle marquetry in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, along with Montigny and Joseph. He is believed to have trained with one of André-Charles Boulle's son Charles-Joseph during the 1740s, and working almost exclusively with marchands-merciers like Claude-François Julliot, he specialised in restoring existing works by Boulle and creating new case furniture in a comparable style, sometimes incorporating elements from older Boulle pieces. After his death, the workshop was continued by his son Pierre-Etienne and during the Restauration buy his grandson Pierre-François-Henri Levasseur, called Levasseur jeune, who took over his father's business in 1823 and produced similar work into the 1830s. An identical meuble d'appui to the present lot, also in contre-partie marquetry, was in the collection of Robert Balkany, sold Sotheby's Paris, 20 September 2016, lot 38. The satyr's masks are casts after an original bronze mount by Boulle, seen for example on two bureaux plats provided to the Prince de Condé and Mlle de Choiseul in 1720 (ill. J-N Ronfort, André Charles Boulle (1642-1732) : Un nouveau style pour l'Europe, Paris 2009, nos.20,21 p.236-39). It was one of Levasseur's favoured models, appearing on several important works produced by Levasseur in the 1770s and 1780s, These include the sumptuous commode supplied to the king's brother the Comte d'Artois for his bedroom in the Palais du Temple (Paris, Louvre, since 2011; ill. in A. Pradère, French Furniture Makers: The Art of the Ébéniste from Louis XIV to the Revolution, London 1989, p.314 ,fig.356), and a secretaire from the Comte de Vaudreuil Collection acquired by the Prince Regent (later George IV) for his London residence Carlton House in 1812 (now Windsor Castle, King's Dining Room; ill. Pradère, p.309, fig.348).