Writing table
Roger Vandercruse, called Lacroix
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The writing drawer contains a slide covered with modern tooled green leather and fitted with three gilt-metal containers for pens, sand, and an inkwell. The two lower drawers are treated as though they were a single panel, veneered with continuous floral marquetry and framed by a gilt-bronze molding of entwined-rope design chased with beading. The overall shape of this table and the style of floral marquetry with endcut kingwood suggests a date early in Lacroix’s career when he was still working under the influence of Oeben. The marquetry and cabriole legs in combination with fully neoclassical mounts denote a transitional table. The mounts and marquetry are found on other pieces by Lacroix, particularly the central ornamental motif of the foliated wheel inlaid on both top and lower shelf, a motif that he often repeated. It was used on small transitional tables;[1] on a group of neoclassical bonheurs du jour;[2] and on a group of neoclassical upright secretaries where the motif is combined with cornflower marquetry in diamond reserves.[3] Lacroix also made this shape of table as a combined toilet and writing table; an example that repeats some of the same mounts, although veneered with a more naturalistic floral marquetry, was in the René Fribourg collection.[4] [Bill Rieder, 1984] Footnotes: [1] Examples are in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris (E. Jonas, comp., Collections leguées à la ville de Paris par Ernest Cognacq, Paris, 1930, p. 88, no. 401) and a table formerly in the Heywood-Lonsdale collection (sale, Christie’s, London, June 6, 1957, lot 155). [2] One in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York (F. J. B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, New York, 1966, I, pp. 180–81, no. 103); another formerly in the collection of Mrs. Derek Fitzgerald (sale, Sotheby’s, London, November 22, 1963, lot 134); and two formerly at Kraemer & Cie, Paris (P. Verlet, Les Ebénistes du XVIIIe siècle français, 1963, p. 169, fig. 2; Connaissance des Arts no 285 [November 1975], p. 37 [advertisement]). [3] One is published in G. Janneau, Le Meuble léger en France, Paris, 1952, p. 353, figs. 194, 195; two were formerly in the collection of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice, New York (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, October 3, 1970, lots 146, 147); at Dalva Brothers, Inc., New York, 1983. [4] P. Verlet, Les Ebénistes du XVIIIe siècle français, 1963, p. 167, figs. 2, 3.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.