Pair of side chairs (chaises à la reine)

Michel Gourdin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The top rail of the back and front rail of the seat are carved with three flowers flanked by branches of flowers and leaves. Both Michel and Jean-Baptiste Gourdin used the motif of a flower at each front corner above a split stem running down the fore edge of the front leg with an acanthus leaf on the foot. Other chairs by Michel Gourdin are in the Louvre, the Bouvier Collection in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris; the Wallace Collection, London; Windsor Castle; and the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York. [Bill Rieder, 1984]

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art