During this brilliant period, from 1774 to 1790, we meet with the names of several artists employed for painting the panelling of rooms, the lunettes over chimney fronts, and the panels of ceilings. Fragonard, Natoire, Boucher (the director of the Academy) are among the foremost of these. Their history perhaps belongs rather to that of painters than of our present subject; but they are too much mixed up with eighteenth century furniture not to find mention even in a sketch like the present.
Other artists such as Delafosse, Lalonde, Cauvet and Salembier designed arabesques, decorative woodwork, and furniture. The designs of many of them are still extant: and Cauvet dedicated a book of them to Monsieur, the king's brother. Four tables with silver-gilt mounts of his design were made for the queen's house of the Trianon, and afterwards removed to the favourite residence of the emperor Napoleon at St. Cloud. Robert and Barthélemy were sculptors and bronze workers who made mounts for furniture, and engravers. Meissonnier, Oppenord, Queverdo worked in the same way. Hubert Robert, a painter, helped Micque in all the decorations of the Trianon.
Two or three cabinet-makers have transmitted a great name, though little seems to be known of their history. Of these Riesener and David Roentgen were ébénistes, or workers in fine cabinet making. The designation is taken from the ebony and other exotic woods, which had come into more general use in Europe from the end of the seventeenth century subsequently to 1695, when the Dutch settled in Ceylon. The French obtained ebony from Madagascar, but in very small quantities. After the settlements at Ceylon we find it introduced into Europe on a larger scale. There are green and yellow varieties but the black wood is the most valuable, and Ceylon is the country in which the greatest quantities are produced. We still find in English houses much old carved ebony furniture, mainly chairs and cabinets, dating generally from the early years of the Dutch occupation.
Riesener used tulip (Liriodendron tulipifera), rosewood, holly (ilex aquifolium), maple (acer campestre), laburnum (cytisus Alpinus), purple wood (copaifera pubiflora), &c. Wreaths and bunches of flowers, exquisitely worked and boldly designed, form centres of his marquetry panels which are often plain surfaces of one wood. On the sides, in borders and compartments, we find diaper patterns in three or four quiet colours. These conventional sides or corners of diaper work help to give point to the graceful compositions that form the principal feature in his marquetry. Chests of drawers and cabinets are sometimes met with in snake wood and other varieties of brown wood, of which the grain is waved or curled without marquetry. The name of Riesener is to be found stamped sometimes on the panel itself, sometimes on the oak lining of the pieces of furniture made by him.
A number of exceptional examples of Riesener's cabinets are described in the appendix to the detailed catalogue of furniture in the South Kensington museum. The best pieces are from the collection now belonging to Sir Richard Wallace. The most imposing of these is the rounded bureau or secrétaire, made for Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is beautifully inlaid on the top, ends, and back with designs emblematic of the sciences, &c., and with bust heads. The letters S. R. are put upon a broad band of decoration that runs round the lower portion of the bureau. A similar piece of furniture with gilt bronze candle branches by Gouthière, on the sides, is now in the Louvre. Both are signed.
David Roentgen was born at Niewid near Luneville, in which latter city he worked as a contemporary of Riesener, but younger by some years in age. He also made marquetry in lighter woods and of rather a gayer tone than those of Riesener. Both of them often worked in plain mahogany, and in such cases trusted for the effectiveness of their pieces to the excellence of the mounts of chased and gilt metal by their contemporary, Gouthière. In his light marquetry David used various white woods. Pear, lime, and light-coloured woods were occasionally tinted with various shades by burning. This process, originally effected by hot irons, is better and more delicately managed by hot sand. Only browns and dark ochrous yellows are obtained by this means, and the more delicately toned marquetry is without hues of green or blue. Those tints, however, can be obtained by steeping the wood in various chemical solutions.
As a maker of gilt bronze furniture mounts Gouthière had a wide reputation. He belongs to the period of Louis the sixteenth. With him Riesener and David worked in concert; all their best pieces are finished with the mounts of Gouthière. Among examples in this country is the cabinet in the royal collection at Windsor. No signature has been discovered on this piece, but the exquisite modelling of the flower borders, the metal mouldings and mounts, and the crown supported by figures of cupids that surmounts the whole, leave us in no hesitation as to its authorship.
Gouthière modelled and chased up similar work for carriages, and mounts for marble chimney pieces, such as that in the boudoir just above referred to. The gilding on these mounts is so good and has been laid on so massively that the metal has in general suffered no substantial injury down to our own times, and can be restored to its original lustre by soap and water. Indeed, the fine old work dating from the two previous reigns by André Boule and other artists, after the designs of Berain, has suffered little. The boule clocks, with arched glass panels in front and spreading supports and figure compositions on the top, have in most cases come down to us clothed in their original water gilding, easily to be cleaned though looking black when they have been long left to neglect.
Contemporaneous with Riesener in France was the Italian maker of marquetry, Maggiolino. In Florence, Venice, Milan, and Genoa, cabinets and commodes of marquetry were produced. German cabinet-makers manufactured the same work through the earlier part of the century. Bombé or curved furniture was also made by the Germans with great, we may almost say with extravagant, skill. To maintain mouldings on the angles of these curved and waving surfaces is a feat in workmanship of difficult attainment, and German cabinet-makers seem to have taken delight in exhibiting such skill. The quaint work of the minute carvings in box and other hard woods, admirably carried out during the times of the immediate pupils of Dürer and the school of well-trained artists who succeeded him, was no longer to be found. The desolating wars that swept over this part of Europe during the days of Louis the fourteenth and Frederick the great seem to have exhausted the country, and worn out the ancient industry of the cities. Guilds died away, the men who composed them being required for the exigencies of war, and the wealth of the inhabitants was so reduced that the leisure to enjoy and even the means to buy fine productions of art existed no longer.
Few collectors have done greater service to the study of English art than Horace Walpole; and few have had the opportunities he enjoyed a century ago, when he was able to fill Strawberry Hill with a collection of mediæval, renaissance, and later works of art of every description. A lively passage, alluding to the contract for the roof and the glazing of King's college chapel, Cambridge, commemorates his value for these art traditions. "As much," he says, "as we imagine ourselves arrived at higher perfection in the arts, it would not be easy for a master of a college to go into St. Margaret's parish, Southwark, to bespeak such a roof as that of King's college, and a dozen or two of windows so admirably drawn, and order them to be sent home by such a day, as if they were bespeaking a chequered pavement."