For the upcoming TEFAF Maastricht (March 11-19, 2023), Galerie Steinitz, a regular at spectacular stands, has selected furniture and objects that are extraordinary in terms of aesthetics, provenance, and rarity.
Among the highlights presented by the gallery, enthusiasts will discover furniture and objects of absolute importance, each constituting a true milestone in the history of art.
Fans will thus find an exceptional bronze "walking horse", the famous model by Giovanni di Bologna (1529-1608) cast by Antonio Susini (1558-1624) or Giovanni Francesco Susini (1585 – around 1653). Executed in Florence at the beginning of the 17th centurye century, it will take pride of place. It is of very high quality of casting and chasing, being one of the finest examples of this model, a reduction of the horse of the monumental equestrian statue of Duke Cosimo i de Medici made by Giovanni di Bologna and erected in Florence in 1594 in the Piazza della Signoria, inspired by the ancient bronze equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius, and now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
A similar horse can be found in the famous painting by Willem van Haecht (1593-1637), kept at Rubens' house in Antwerp; we should also mention the examples kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum, bequeathed by George Salting in 1910, and at the Staatliche Kuntsammlungen, in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, but also that of the collections of His Majesty the King of England.
Also to admire a remarkable rockery console with a hunting trophy – a wild boar hunt by Jacques Verberckt (1704-1771). This large two-meter console table comes from the Williams-Wynn collection and dates from around 1740. Surmounted by an imposing Campan marble top, in molded and carved oak which has retained its original gilding and restoration.
Its extraordinary monumentality and virtuosity call into question its original, necessarily prestigious, reparure. This console table was the subject of intensive research by the ornamental sculptor François Gilles, who was able to demonstrate, notably thanks to the very precise comparison with the details of the trumeaux and decorative elements created by Verberckt and his workshop for the apartments of the Palace of Versailles – notably that of the Dauphin in 1747 – that the general spirit of the sculpture of this console table, its tension, its breadth, its subtlety, is indeed the talent of this “exceptional” sculptor.
Two Louis XV chests of drawers, circa 1750-1755, stamped by Bernard II Van Riesen Burgh (apr.1696-1766), with chinoiserie decoration made in red and gold Martin varnish, from the collection of the Dukes of La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville in their private mansion at 47 rue de Varenne in Paris should also attract attention.
These pieces of furniture are of exceptional craftsmanship and were undoubtedly commissioned and marketed by Lazare-Duvaux (c. 1703-1758), one of the leading dealers of his time, based on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. He specialized in Far Eastern lacquer furniture, for whom BVRB made numerous pieces, several of which were sold to the King and Madame de Pompadour. Only ten red lacquered commodes were recorded during the entire production of this merchant haberdashery between 1748 and 1758, demonstrating the rarity of this type of furniture. Five of these ten pieces of furniture probably correspond to the two commodes, since they are the same size and the same price, which suggests that these otherwise identical pieces of furniture must have been very similar.
Exceptionally, the five mentions of Duvaux sales between May 18, 1754 and March 1, 1758 reveal the names of the first buyers: "Mr. Dufour, the father", "Mrs. the Duchess of Mirepoix", "Mrs. the Marquise d'Haussy", "HSH Mgr. the Duke of Orléans" and finally "Mr. Duperron".
To date, only five chests of drawers are known to match these descriptions. Three of these pieces of furniture now belong to major institutions: one is held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon (Edma and Anthelme Trimolet, bequeathed in 1883); the second comes from the Breuvard de Roubaix collection, belonging to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; and the third is in the collections of the Louvre Abu Dhabi; only the two chests of drawers from the Steinitz Gallery remain available on the art market.
Enthusiasts will also appreciate a unique brand in the history of French furniture that sparked the "Greek taste" in Paris in the late 1750s. This is a shell furniture by Joseph Baumhauer (1747-1772), decorated with bronzes by Philippe Caffieri (1714-1774), all made around 1758 after the designs of Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1715-1759), following a large flat desk and its cartonnier, now preserved at the Château de Chantilly, for the cabinet of Ange-Laurent de Lalive de Jully (1725-1779) who was the “introducer of ambassadors” of Louis XV, also an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, in his private mansion on rue Ménars in Paris.
A pair of large bowls in “Vosges serpentine marble”, having been part of the collections of Jean-Nicolas de Boullongne (1726-1787), Minister of Finance of Louis XV from 1753, and of the banker Guillaume Sabatier (1730-1808), cousin of Cambacérès and founder of the Bank of France during the Consulate and the Empire, will also be present on the stand. Made in Paris around 1770-1775, this pair of richly mounted cups belonged to the collection of Jean-Nicolas de Boullongne (1726-1787) in his private mansion on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.
The two cups were acquired by the merchant haberdasher Philippe-François Julliot (1755-1836) in November 1787, then by Jean-Baptiste-Charles-François de Clermont d'Amboise (1728-1792) to be seized in June 1793. Inventoried in 1794 at the Nesle depot, they were sent to the Museum central des Arts (Le Louvre) in August 1794. They then became the property of Guillaume Sabatier (1730-1808), banker and cousin of Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824), to adorn his Durfort mansion, Place Vendôme in Paris.
Nature revealing itself, a young woman (Allegory of Nature) carefully lifts the veils in which she is wrapped, it is a remarkable sculpture in polychrome marble and onyx from Algeria, decorated with a malachite scarab, topped with a lapis lazuli ribbon, and resting on a granite base which has the signature "E. BARRIAS" on the right side.
This is the only reduced copy (102 cm high) made in polychrome marble by the sculptor Ernest Barrias (1841-1905) between 1902 and 1904, from the large version (200 cm high) kept at the Musée d'Orsay. It was made on behalf of "Monsieur Watel in Paris". The Watel family was one of the very important families of bankers, businessmen and industrialists in the north of France with three brothers established in Paris, the sons of Louis Watels, entrepreneur then banker, Parisian municipal councilor, and administrator of the oil of Montechino, Italy.
André Tirlet
