A set of four mahogany gothic revival chairs by 1820

A rare set of four Restauration period mahogany chairs, with circular backs pierced with a quatrefoil, on tapered and turned baluster legs to the front and saber legs to the back.

This model of chairs, adorned with its characteristic round backs pierced with a Gothic quatrefoil pattern, seems to have been created by the Jacob Desmalter company during the Empire period. A similar pair of chairs were also in the collection of the architect and decorator Emilio Terry at the Château de Rochecotte (Reproduced in "La Décoration," Hachette, Connaissance des Arts collection, 1965, Volume II, page 134, and sold in an anonymous sale by Pousse Cornet, Blois, November 30, 2015, lot no. 243).
This model of chairs was also distributed abroad, notably at the Prussian court, as evidenced by the portrait of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV in his office in Berlin Castle by Franz Krüger (oil on canvas, 1846, (HST 1846, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, inv 1988/437). The King is depicted standing in his cabinet designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel between 1824 and 1826 when he was still the Crown Prince, in the former Saint Erasmus chapel of the castle, with a rich ribbed vault dating from the second half of the 16th century. To meet the prince's romantic taste, Schinkel created furniture in Gothic forms. In the background, one can clearly recognize a chair of a similar model to the one we are presenting.

If Gothic revival became popular among some enlightened enthusiasts in England as early as the 1760s, it was not until the first decades of the 19th century that interest in the Middle Ages spread to French architecture, decorative arts, and painting. The spectacular neo-Gothic decorations for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, designed by architects Percier and Fontaine for the coronation ceremonies of Napoléon, or the troubadour paintings collected by Empress Josephine, were the first manifestations of this renewed interest in the past, meanwhile, by 1820, with the generation of Romantics, Gothic style was everywhere, under the influence of great figures such as the Duchess of Berry, the Countess of Osmond, or the Countess du Cayla.