A German Neoclassical GIlt Bronze and Brass Mounted Mahogany Tripod Table by David Roentgen, Circa 1785

Galerie Aveline, Paris;

Kravis Collection, New York;

Christie's New York, 12 December 2024, lot 103;

Where acquired by the present collector.

This architectonic table epitomises the mastery of the neoclassical idiom by the German cabinetmaker David Roentgen (1743-1807), whose Neuwied workshop produced elegant and highly sophisticated case furniture and clocks, often with complicated mechanical functions, to royal courts and wealthy aristocratic and private clients throughout Northern and Western Europe. The strikingly linear, almost modernist form is essentially a reinterpretation of the classic English mahogany tripod tilt-top table popularised during the reigns of George II and III, versions of which were produced by Roentgen's father and founder of the family cabinetmaking business Abraham Roentgen (1711-1793) who worked in London for several years during the 1730s.

An identical table in the collection of Ruth Stanton, New York, acquired at Sotheby's London, 7 December 2000, lot 124, was exhibited in Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 2012-January 2013 (Wolfram Koeppe, ed., cat. no. 62, p.200-201), and another identical example is in a private American collection. A further almost identical version stamped by the maker was sold Antoine Ader, Drouot Paris, 4 July 1997, and an additional stamped table with a slight design variation of a stepped base below the column was sold Poulain Le Fur, Paris Palais des Congrès, 22 June 2000.