Lot Essay
Jacques Dubois, maître in 1742.
Jacques Dubois was born at Pontoise on the 7 April 1694. Half-brother of the great marchand-ébéniste Noel Gérard, Dubois was elected maître on 5 September 1742. His two sons followed their father's lead, and indeed his daughter married another ébéniste, Franois Goyer. As his business flourished, he increasingly employed the vernisseur Huitre, who may well have worked on this bureau. Dubois did, however, design and own the models for his mounts, subcontracting much of the casting to the bronziers Heban, Forestier and Castellier and the subsequent gilding to the doreur Nicholas-Claude Hamelin.
A closely related bureau en pente was sold anonymously in Paris, Couturier Nicolay, 2 December 1986, lot 11 (1,049,700 F.fr.), while a further example is illustrated in P.Kjellberg, Le Mobilier Franais du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1989, p.269, fig.g.
Jacques Dubois was born at Pontoise on the 7 April 1694. Half-brother of the great marchand-ébéniste Noel Gérard, Dubois was elected maître on 5 September 1742. His two sons followed their father's lead, and indeed his daughter married another ébéniste, Franois Goyer. As his business flourished, he increasingly employed the vernisseur Huitre, who may well have worked on this bureau. Dubois did, however, design and own the models for his mounts, subcontracting much of the casting to the bronziers Heban, Forestier and Castellier and the subsequent gilding to the doreur Nicholas-Claude Hamelin.
A closely related bureau en pente was sold anonymously in Paris, Couturier Nicolay, 2 December 1986, lot 11 (1,049,700 F.fr.), while a further example is illustrated in P.Kjellberg, Le Mobilier Franais du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1989, p.269, fig.g.