A Louis XVI Mahogany and Gilt-Tooled Leather Cartonnier, Attributed to Jean-François Leleu, Late 18th Century

Stair & Co., 1928;

Duchesse de Talleyrand, Pavillon Colombe, St. Brice-sous-Forêt, Val d'Oise until 1976;

Christie's Paris, 19 December 2007, lot 362;

Private Collection;

Christie's London, 25 April 2017, lot 43;

Where acquired post-sale by the present collector.

The elegantly simplified, highly architectonic silhouette of this impressive case piece in finely figured mahogany with moulded-border panels and rounded fluted corner uprights on the lower section is typical of the later work of the preeminent Louis XVI ébéniste Jean-François Leleu (1729–1807), maître in 1764, one of the leading proponent of the neoclassical revival in French furniture design during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The unusual scale of this filing cabinet would suggest it was a bespoke commission for a specific location. A related pair of cartonniers featured prominently in the grand salon of the apartment of the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Bonchamps at 42 Avenue Foch in Paris, decorated by the celebrated postwar French interior designer Georges Geffroy in the late 1950s (Pierre Arizzoli- Clémentel, Georges Geffroy (1905-1971): Une légende du Grand décor Français, Paris 2016, p.114-115).

The Pavillon Colombe is a Louis XVI villa in St. Brice-sous-Forêt north of Paris built in 1770 for Jean-André Vassal and his mistress, the Franco-Italian actress Marie-Catherine Riggieri, known as 'Colombe' (the dove). It was possibly designed by the neoclassical architect François-Joseph Bélanger. In 1918 it was acquired by the American writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937) who resided there until her death, after which the domain passed into the ownership of the Duc and Duchesse de Talleyrand, who modernised and re-furnished the house and commissioned the landscape architect Russell Page to re-design the garden. In 1938 Héli de Talleyrand-Périgord (1882-1968) had married the Cincinnati heiress Lela Mackintosh, née Emery (d.1968), and the couple divided their time between mutiple residences in France, Rome and the U.S.