A late Louis XV 'gout grec' solid mahogany secretaire a abattant stamped P.GARNIER

Pierre Garnier (1726-1806)
A solid mahogany Greek-style secrétaire a abattant
Solid mahogany, oak, gilt bronze, steel, bleu turquin marble top
Stamped three times P.GARNIER, Pierre Garnier received master in 1742
Paris circa 1765-1775

A large solid mahogany secrétaire à abattant, decorated with panels in gilded frames, the fall-front enclosing a green gilt-tooled leather-lined writing surface and a fitted interior with eight drawers framing two niches and topped by a shelf, the lower section with two doors opening to reveal a shelf.
With its solid, architectural lines, this desk is a perfect illustration of the ‘Gout Grec’ (Greek taste), one of the most innovative stylistic trends of the 18th century, that has initiated a veritable renewal of forms in the decorative arts during the last years of the reign of Louis XV. Heir to a movement in French architecture that began in the 1740s and coincided with the rediscovery of the sites of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748), the Greek taste was introduced into Parisian cabinetmaking in the 1760s as a reaction against the rocaille taste, which the new generation considered corrupt. It was expressed through the use of the rectilinear lines of classical architecture, borrowed from Greco-Roman ornamentation and vocabulary.
One of the precursors of this Greek taste was the architect and decorator Louis Joseph Le Lorrain (1715-1759). This new fashion, which emerged at the end of the reign of Louis XV and foreshadowed the neoclassicism that would flourish under Louis XVI, attracted a clientele of financiers and collectors, such as Ange Lalive de Jully and the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour, who were steeped in ancient culture, eager for novelty and keen to break away from the sometimes excessive ornamentation of the Rococo style.

Pierre Garnier was one of the promoters of this Greek taste. Born around 1726 in Paris, he was the son of a cabinet-maker, François Garnier (†1760), who was active in the first half of the 18th century, established in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and signed with his initials F.G. Pierre Garnier was awarded his master's degree in 1742, when he was not yet twenty, and had a brilliant career. His first decision was to leave the Faubourg Saint Antoine and move to rue Neuve des Petits Champs, in the district where Parisian finance was based. He was close to his colleague Etienne Levasseur, whose wedding he witnessed in 1748, and at his own wedding in 1754, the presence of such prestigious witnesses as the two Richard brothers, the Abbé de Saint Non and Louis Richard de La Bretèche, testifies to his business ties and friendship with this Parisian elite.

Alongside other cabinetmakers such as : Jean-François Oeben, Jean-François Leleu and Joseph Baumhauer, Garnier was one of the pioneers of the neoclassical style, and his designs from 1760-1770 accompanied the emergence of the ‘à la grecque’ style, the first manifestations of which were seen in the creation of furniture in the taste of Boulle, in ebony decorated with gilded bronzes. In 1761, Garnier produced Greek-style furniture based on designs by Charles de Wailly (1730-1798), which were exhibited at the Salon the same year, including a secretary ‘treated in the best Boulle taste’. Subsequently, Pierre Garnier's main clients were the Orléans family, the Duchess of Mazarin, and the Marquis de Marigny, who, as director of the king's buildings, exercised a sort of ministry of the arts, and to whom he supplied a whole range of mahogany and ebony furniture for his hotel on the Place des Victoires, including a whole set of thirty-six mahogany caned armchairs in 1778, King Gustav III of Sweden, who purchased a pair of commodes in Paris in 1770; the Maréchal de Contades, for whom he supplied most of the furniture for the Château de Montgeoffroy in 1775; the Marquise de Brunois; and the Marquis de La Vaupalière, to whom he supplied a Japanese lacquer secrétaire, now in the musée du Louvre, with lock escutcheons identical to those on our secrétaire