PAIR OF CARVED AND GILDED WOOD ARMCHAIRS

The cartouche-shaped back edged with a leaf-tip molding issuing from rosettes at the base and continuing to leaf sprays on the shoulders, is crested with an architectural member carved at the top with a banded laurel garland and outlined with gadrooning faced with a foliate scrolling frieze.  The padded open arms united to the back with sprays of leafage, have scrolled handrests and scrolling supports faced with a deeply carved acanthus cluster above a plinth which merges into the side rails and is carved with a trail of flowers.  The serpentine seat rail is curved at the front with bow-knotted flowers sprays.  Similar bow-knotted bouquets are carved at the front knees, while husk pendants are carved at the back knees.  The shaped legs terminate in scroll feet raised on small blocks.

Both stamped inside rear seat rail:  F. FOLIOT (for François-Toussaint Foliot, born 1748, master 1773, retired 1786)

French, circa 1775

Height: 41 1/4 inches (104.8 cm)
Width:  30 1/4 inches (76.8 cm)
Depth:  31 1/2 inches (80 cm)

Provenance:   R. Carlhian, Paris (collection label formerly under seat rail)
                     Mrs. A. Hamilton Rice, Philadelphia

Works by this master known as François II Foliot are exceedingly rare and characterized by refinement of line and exquisitely detailed ornament beyond the normal repertory for chairs of the period.

Like his father (François), his grandfather (Nicolas), and his uncle (Nicolas-Quinibert), François-Toussaint Foliot was a regular supplier to the royal Garde-Meuble.  In 1774 he worked to the rarefied designs of the Dessinateur du Mobilier de la Couronne, Jacques Gondoin, to create the state bed for the new crowned Louis XVI, and a set of chairs for the King's Cabinet des Jeux at Versailles.  Several of the chairs survive (see P. Verlet, Mobilier Royal Français, vol. II, Paris 1945, no. 25) and are today given pride of place in the King's Cabinet Interieur at Versailles.  They bear strong stylistic resemblance to the present chairs, which can also be compared with the set made by François II Foliot for Madame Elizabeth at Fontainebleau in 1778 (see Verlet, Mobilier Royal, vol. I, 1955, no. 28) and the famed Mobilier des Dieux, one element of which signed N.Q. Foliot (op. cit. no. 25).