Carcass in Hungarian oak; amaranth veneer; gilded bronze; metal; black leather with gilded edging.
STAMPS: B.V.R.B.
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: LG, mark in white paint visible on the reverse side of the right rear leg of the desk.
H. 76 cm. (29 ¾ in.); W. 172 cm. (67 ½ in.); D. 84 cm. (33 in.).
PROVENANCE: collection of André Saint (1871-1933), in his hôtel known as de Breteuil, 12 avenue Foch, Paris; collection of Madame André Saint, née Madeleine Bariquand (1879-1955), auction in Paris, galerie Jean Charpentier, Mr. Etienne Ader, 20th and 21st May 1935, lot n°. 185, repr. pl. XXXVII (auctioned for 107,500 francs on 21st May 1935) ; acquired at the auction by the German art dealer Hans Stiebel († in 1964), established at 43 avenue Montaigne, Paris; collection of Baroness Renée Eléonore Juliette de Becker Remy (1903-1987), daughter of Baron Léon Lambert (1851-1919) and Zoé Lucie de Rothschild (1863-1916), granddaughter of Baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911), in her New York apartement located at 820 5th Avenue, Manhattan; collection of Rosenberg & Stiebel Gallery, New York; sold by the latter to Baron Guy de Rothschild (1919-2007); collection of Baron Guy de Rothschild and Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild (1927-1996), at the Hôtel Lambert, located at nᵒ. 2, rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, Paris; by descent, Rothschild collection to the present day.
This large bureau plat, is one of a very small corpus of flat desks of the same model by Bernard II Vanrisamburgh. Only two other examples have so far been listed. The first, veneered in amaranth and satinwood, was part of the collection of Rodolphe Kann (1845-1905) in Paris. The second desk, entirely veneered in ebony, was part of the eighteenth-century collection of Louis-François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis (1696-1788), 3rd Duke of Richelieu. It is almost certainly this one or the example by Rodolphe Kann, that is immortalised by the painter Louis Tocqué (1696-1772), who was one of the most renowned portraitists of his time. In that painting from the collections of Louis XV, now to be seen in the Musée du Louvre, the ten-year-old Dauphin Louis de France (1729-1765), eldest son of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska, is depicted standing in his study studio, pointing with his left hand to plans and measuring instruments placed on a large bureau plat of our model. In fact, the Dauphin seems to have been so fond of the model that on February 18, 1745, the marchand mercier Thomas-Joachim Hébert delivered a bureau plat of the same design to Versailles for the Grand Cabinet of the Prince’s new apartment.
