Ref.11440
Edouard LIEVRE (1828-1886) - A center table with fantastical masks

This center table was designed around 1878 by Édouard Lièvre . Predominant artist of the Japonism in France, Édouard Lièvre experienced two successive professional lives: first as an illustrator, then as an ornamental designer and cabinetmaker, during which time he produced pieces of furniture in a neo-Renaissance style as well as in the Japanese style. Coming from a modest family in eastern France, he began working very early in a lithographic printing house in Nancy before drawing decorative objects for a foundry in the Meuse region. Then he moved to Paris, where he attended the studio of the painter, engraver and lithographer Théodore Valerio. After a trip to Brussels in 1847, he entered the studio of Thomas Couture, academic painter, and he will realize, in watercolor, a copy of the Romans of decadence, noticed by the critic Paul Mantz during the Salon of 1847. Following the donation to the Louvre Museum of the Charles Sauvageot collection, he was commissioned to publish a selection of works: the two volumes appeared in 1863 under the title "Musée impérial du Louvre : Collection Sauvageot dessinée et gravée à l’eau-forte par Édouard Lièvre". He then began "Les Collections célèbres d’œuvres d’art dessinées et gravées d’après les originaux par Édouard Lièvre", which was published in 1866. In 1870, Alfred Darcel, curator of the Louvre's art objects, wrote the introduction of his new book: "Les Arts décoratifs à toutes les époques". Édouard Lièvre worked for various amateurs as well as for works of art editors for which he drew decorative art models. After his death, the two sales (in 1887 and 1890) during which his possessions were dispersed, were a resounding success thanks to the press. This beautiful center table perfectly illustrates the artist mastery and his taste for luxurious materials. He chose rosewood for this piece, rare and precious exotic wood, whose dark color enhances the brilliance of gilded bronze ornaments. Warm tones and purple veining bring nobility and character to the furniture. The legs curved shape is counterbalanced by the straightness of the H stretcher and the apron, thus mixing grace and sobriety. The care given to the details is characteristic of Edouard Lièvre's production who seems to "embroider" the wood by producing openworked patterns with extreme precision. Those which adorn the apron of our table are delicately performed. They link the differents parts of the table by inserting the apron through an elegant stylized flower while extending to the curved corners formed by the legs. These openworked decorations are ornated with arabesques, scrolls and stylized plant elements. They are quite representative of the syncretic aspect of Lièvre’s works which mixes different sources of Western and Eastern inspiration. One can observe the same kind of motifs in Gabriel Viardot’s works, another predominant figure of Japonisme in France, who adorns his furniture with a "lace" of carved wood made in the same spirit, despite some formal differences (of which a more geometric aspect). The apron of our table is adorned with a gilded bronze symbol evoking the shou ideogram, synonymous with longevity. This one is also noticeable on a jardiniere made by Édouard Lièvre for Ferdinand Barbedienne, witness of the vogue for a fantasized Orient and reconstituted through composite elements adapted to Western culture. The tops of the legs are adorned with fantastic masks which are specific to this table model and of which an identical copy is preserved in the Orsay Museum in Paris. These masks represent a creature that could be a lion or an oriental dragon forming a fall decorated with plant scrolls and covering the curve of the leg. The same ornaments are present on the gilded bronzes feet. Gilded bronze cartouches are inserted at regular intervals on the stretcher. The latter is decorated, in its center, with a gilded bronze grooved ball featuring foliages. All these bronze elements are in their original condition, covered with an old gold patina and not re-gilded. A beautiful marble slab is insetted in the table top and framed by a moldered rosewood bordure. This "Brocatelle" marble takes its name from a fabric which name comes from the Italian word broccato, technique of fabric manufacture by the "broaching" process. Particularly fragile and difficult to carve, it is still very popular for its decorative value. It is more specifically a "Spanish Brocatelle" because of its extraction site which is in the Pyrenees. The quality and the beautiful tones of this marble (pale pink jasped with yellow, white and gray) contribute to consider this table as a masterpiece. To date, we know only five tables on the same model and each of them has a different marble top. The one preserved at the Orsay Museum and mentioned above includes a Violet Breccia marble top. The other tables listed (perfectly identical, with the exception of the marble top) are kept in private collections and show other types of marble such as Campan or Sarrancolin. The after death inventory of Édouard Lièvre mentions one of these tables with a marble top made out of Aleppo Breccia

Ref.11229
Emmanuel FREMIET (1824-1910) et Emile MÜLLER ET CIE The Eagle and The Lizard, ridge tiles after the sculpture of the Château of Pierrefonds

Glazed stoneware H : 60 cm / 23” 5/8 ; W : 76 cm / 29” 15/16 ; D. : 30 cm / 30” 13/16. Circa 1900 A major sculptor of the nineteenth century, Emmanuel Frémiet imagined "The Eagle" around 1878, a chimera with an armor and its feet protected by spurs, for the renovation of the Chateau of Pierrefonds under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc. The Grande Tuilerie of Ivry creates from this stone sculpture a work in glazed sandstone circa 1900, of which we have here a copy. These enameled stoneware chimeras are museum pieces: the Metropolitan Museum of New York holds one of the only two known copies of the Lizard made by the Grande Tuilerie, while a copy of the ceramic Eagle is preserved at the Chateau of Pierrefonds. It is indeed one of the first important works of Emmanuel Frémiet (1824-1910), who started as a lithographer at the Museum of Natural History in Paris in the 1840s. His observation of animals made him an excellent sculptor who, with a taste for the Troubadour fantasies, gave birth to this chimera. Emmanuel Frémiet is one of the most important artists of the 19th century. Pierrefonds truly launched his career, both as an animal sculptor and for his future great equestrian statues. In fact, he is the author of the golden statue of Joann of Arc installed on Place des Pyramides in Paris (1874), and of the statue of St. Michael of the Mont Saint-Michel Abbey (1897). Widely rewarded, he was a Legion of Honor Officer in 1887, a member of the Institute and professor of animal drawing at the Museum in 1892, and he was consecrated by a Grand Prix at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. The Emperor noticed his talent during the construction of the Salle des Manèges at the Louvre in 1858, and recommended him to Viollet-le-Duc for the restoration of the Chateau of Pierrefonds. For this work, fantasy is allowed and artists have the freedom to let their sensibilities run free. Frémiet was commissioned to make the great equestrian statue of Louis of Orleans, completed in 1869, and also made four chimeric animal statuettes for the main staircase. He designed them around 1878 and they were carved in stone in the 1880s. Thus, the Eagle is part of a set of four chimeras, with the Ox, the Marabou and the Lizard, which stand behind the great statue of Louis of Orleans. The whole decorates the castle courtyard, where the guests of the imperial couple arrived for the Séries de Compiègne. The four chimeras of the staircase in Pierrefonds immediately marked the public and became works in their own right. These four figures are engraved by A. Raguenet for his journal Materials and documents of architecture, sculpture, and all the industrial arts in 1895, then in 1905, they are illustrated in The monsters in art, by Edmond Valton. Faced with the success of these four chimeras, Emmanuel Frémiet collaborates with Louis Müller to adapt them to ceramics, a collaboration from which comes our ridge tile. Indeed, at the end of the 19th century, the best artists appealed to the Émile Müller et Cie factory, led by the son of the founder, Louis Müller, since 1889. Emile Müller (1823-1889), a trained architect, founded "La Grande Tuilerie" in Ivry in 1854, a decorative ceramic factory for architecture, which has enjoyed increasing success over the years. The Grande Tuilerie was crowned with a Grand Prix in 1889. It was widely renowned and extended its activities to include reproductions of masterpieces such as Eugène Grasset, Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, and the sculptors Vibert, Charpentier, Falguière, Guillot, and Emmanuel Frémiet. In fact, the Grande Tuilerie develops a Catalog for the execution in sandstone of a selection of works by the masters of contemporary statuary, and in 1896 proposes the Ox and the Lizard by Frémiet. In 1904, the catalog proposes the four animals. It was in these same years that the factory produced its most famous masterpieces: the domes’ roofing of the Grand and Petit Palais, the Bakers by Alexandre Charpentier in 1900, and the "Maison des Chardons" in 1903.

Ref.15584
Jean-Paul MAZAROS (1823-1900), Neo-Renaissance four-poster bed in carved walnut

A friend and patron of Gustave Courbet, and close to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with whom he shared ideas, Jean-Paul Mazaroz was a singular figure: collector, sculptor, and author of sociological and economic essays. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon in 1846 and then the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1850, he partnered with the cabinetmaker Pierre Riballier, whose daughter he married in 1853. Following the Universal Exhibition of 1851, he discovered the use of machinery in cabinetmaking, a tool previously used exclusively by the English. A pioneer in its use in France, he thus ushered the Riballier-Mazaroz workshop into a new era. Eager to make use of all the advancements of his time, Jean-Paul Mazaroz readily described himself as an "industrial artist" and published a photographic collection of his workshop's creations, rather than a simple catalog of engravings. A supplier to Emperor Napoleon III, his company was one of the most prosperous industries of the Second Empire and the Third Republic before closing in 1890. The Neo-Renaissance ornamental style of this imposing four-poster bed makes it a superb example of the historicist style of the Napoleon III period. Adorned with cartouches featuring mascarons and acanthus scrolls, the canopy simulates an antique entablature, decorated with gadroons and finished with a border of purple fringe. It is supported by four composite columns of particularly intricate design: from bottom to top, they feature a register of acanthus leaves intertwined with garlands of fruit, a fluted shaft surmounted by a Corinthian capital. The whole is topped by a fanciful structure crowned with an Ionic capital. The headboard displays a Renaissance-style architectural motif resembling a tabernacle framed by two reclining female figures beside cornucopias. The structure rests on turned feet decorated with gadroons. The decorative motifs on the bed's side posts are particularly rich (twists, palmettes, acanthus), and the sculpted volutes and faun masks attest to virtuoso cabinetmaking inspired by the 16th century. Finally, the foot of the bed features a superb garland of fruit, surmounted by a medallion and a low-arched entablature. The whole is flanked by sumptuous acanthus leaf volutes. The design of our bed is similar to the one exhibited by Mazaroz at the 1867 Universal Exhibition (1) and purchased by the Russian industrialist and collector Paul Demidoff, owner of the famous Demidoff vase now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 44.152a). Our bed bears the maker's mark in several places: "P. MAZAROZ. R." It is conceivable that Jean-Paul Mazaroz's interest in the Neo-Renaissance style stemmed both from the historicist vogue of the second half of the 19th century and from the rediscovery at that time of Hugues Sambin, a 16th-century sculptor and one of the few furniture makers whose work is documented for this period. Also of Burgundian origin, it is reasonable to assume that Mazaroz was particularly drawn to his style. The wonders of the Universal Exhibition of 1867, volume 1, Paris, Jules Mesnard, p. 199.