Carving attributed to Guillaume Dupre

Possibly based on designs by Pierre-Nol Rousset

Gilded wood with orginal shaped marble tops. 33 inches in heigth, 44 inches in width, depth 21 1/2.

Provenance: Ruth, Countess Costantino, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Kulukundis, New York

Comparative literature: B.G.B. Pallot, The Art of the Chair in Eighteenth Century France, Paris, 1989, pp. 132 & 135.

Each of this pair of Louis XV period console tables has a serpentine-fronted burgundy and cream veined marble top with rounded corners above a pierced frieze carved with C-scrolls and foliate swags, raised on pierced in curved supports entwined with foliate swags joined by a pierced foliate carved stretcher centered by a foliate cartouche, raised on acanthus carved scrolled toes.

From about 1745 in Paris, a new style began to develop, contemporaneous with the pure rococo, which still had several years to prosper. In response to the criticism that the rococo was 'a dissolution, going beyond what is found in nature,' a symmetry was brought to the rococo while still keeping its essential vocabulary. This so-called 'symmetrical rococo' was adopted by such joiners as the Cressons, Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot, Nicolas Heurtaut and Jean-Baptiste Tilliard. A significant document, dated 8 May 1749, shows three drawings of consoles, made by the architect P.N. Rousset for the carver Guillaume Dupre. They show a completely rococo outline, cut with movement and vigor, on which a decoration of the same style is placed; yet its ornaments are arranged in a strictly symmetrical manner. These drawings of consoles bear a very strong resemblance in composition and decoration to the pair of consoles in question, and thus suggest an attribution to Rousset and Dupre collaboration.