Console table

Unknown

ca. 1745–50 · Carved and gilded oak, marble · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

The asymmetrical cartouche of this small console, as well as its winged C and inverted C scrolls and use of rocaille decoration reveal quintessential elements of the Rococo style prevalent in Continental Europe from 1730s onward. This console was part of the model collection of woodwork, paneling and seat furniture of Maison Leys, a successful decorating business, located at the Place de la Madeleine in Paris. Since 1885 the business was directed by Georges Hoentschel who installed the collection in 1903 in a museum-like display at Boulevard Flandrin, Paris. Three years later, Hoentschel sold the collection to J. Pierpont Morgan who gave the panels with the rest of the decorator’s seventeenth and eighteenth century objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1907.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1745–50

Medium

Carved and gilded oak, marble

Culture

French

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1906