A secretary desk with an oak wood structure veneered with panels of satinwood in herringbone frames of kingwood, rounded uprights and slightly curved sabre legs. Gilded bronze fittings of restrained but elegant visual impact. The front and sides are adorned with an interlacing frieze of larger and smaller circles centred on rosettes with elements of foliage as infill for the smaller rings. A smaller version of the same pattern but without plant motifs runs across the middle of the desk. The two horizontal sections of the front, namely the drop leaf and doors, are set in smooth bronze frames with Greek-style indented corners and four rosettes. The mounts of the front uprights with garlands of laurel and triglyphs with asparagus-tip decoration in the fluting reappear in identical form in other items of furniture during the transition to the Neoclassical or high Neoclassical style. They were used, for example, by René Dubois in one commode published by Pradère¹ and in another auctioned by Sotheby’s New York (24-25 October 2002),² which presents not only very similar bronze decoration but also the same use of large panels of satinwood. The Sotheby’s chest of drawers and the Cerruti secretary desk could indeed be seen as matching items. 

Finally, attention should be drawn to the feet of the desk with their splendid foliate sabots still in the distinctive Rococo style. 

The desk was apparently once owned by Florence J. Gould (1895-1983).³ Jean-François Leleu (1729-1807, master 1764) was born in Paris and served his apprenticeship there to Jean- François Oeben, whose influence can be detected in his early works. When this great master died at an early age in 1763, Leleu hoped to succeed him but was bested by Jean- Henri Riesener, the future king of Neoclassical furniture-making, who not only took over the workshop with all its royal commissions but also married Oeben’s widow. Leleu qualified as a maître ébéniste in 1764 and set up his own business but never forgave his rival and indeed attacked him physically two years later, in 1765, punching him in the face according to Riesener’s official complaint to the authorities. Having lost Oeben’s royal commissions to Riesener, Leleu succeeded in developing a personal style that was generally less opulent in terms of marquetry but original and combined with flawless technique. This proved highly successful and he served as official cabinetmaker to the Prince de Condé in the 1770s, producing a series of emblematic works for the Palais Bourbon in the most advanced Neoclassical style, for which he was paid the then astronomical sum of 60,000 lire. His rich and illustrious clients included the Marquis de Laborde, banker to the court.⁴ In his creations, Leleu frequently renounced marquetry in favour of veneering, exploiting the expressive power of highly select and noble materials like satinwood, purpleheart and rosewood, deftly arranged in large panels and sunburst or butterfly patterns embellished with fine bronze decorations.⁵ Even his technically less sophisticated works, like the one discussed here, have their own peculiar elegance. Leleu took his son-in-law Charles-Antoine Stadler into the business in 1780 and left it to him on his death in 1807 at the age of seventy-eight, largely unscathed by the upheavals of the French Revolution. 

Roberto Antonetto 

¹ Pradère 1989, p. 302, fig. 338. 

² Sotheby’s, New York, Important French & Continental Furniture & Decorations, European Works of Art, Ceramics, Tapestries & Carpets, October 24-25, 2002, lot 1204. 

³ Florence La Caze (1895-1983), the third wife of the American industrialist and collector Frank Jay Gould (1877-1956), played a leading part in high society on the Riviera during the 1930s and hosted a literary salon frequented by figures like Fitzgerald, Gide, Cocteau and Dalí. 

⁴ See Verlet 1982, p. 157; Kjellberg 1989, pp. 505- 520; Pradère 1989, pp. 333-342. 

⁵ Examples include those of the bureau plat from the Flahaut Collection auctioned by Christie’s in London on 11 June 1992, lot 61.