Pair of French Directoire Fauteuils en Curule

Each of à l’antique form with padded back and seat, the downswept arms ending in ball finials, the x-frame supports with lion’s paw feet.

These finely sculpted fauteuils supported by curule-form bases, reflect the ’antique’ influence of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum during the 18th century. This form based on the antique Roman sella curulis (said to derive from currus, ‘chariot’), a curved X-frame seat reserved for magistrates and other high-ranking officials, and thus an appropriate design to project power and status. Forms such as this became extremely popular and the new vocabulary of ornament was swiftly adopted by ornemanistes such as Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, architects and designers to Napoleon I. They produced a volume of designs using ancient motifs entitled Récueil de Décorations Intérieures, which consequently became a favorite model with workers in every conceivable field of applied art. A drawing for a very similar armchair, but with a different back by Charles Percier, was intended as a model for Georges Jacob. While a virtually identical fauteuil to the pair offered here was published slightly later by Pierre de La Mésangère (1761-1831) in his Meubles et Objets de Goût, N°20 in 1802 (see illustration).

The fashion for classical furniture which emerged in France in the 1780s went on to spread throughout Europe. The revolutionary period in France put a stop to furniture production, which recovered under the Directoire when many of the cabinetmakers of the Ancien Régime were commissioned once again. The post-Revolution society became wealthier, but aspired to an idealized simplicity, applied to both clothing and decoration. Interior decoration was Pompeian, Egyptian or Etruscan in style, but reflected above all an aspiration to new aesthetic values in a changing world.

A set of four curule armchairs of identical design and attributed to Jacob were formerly with Maurice Segoura, Paris, sold Christie’s New York, 19 October 2006, lot 204 ($84,000). An almost identical pair of armchairs was sold Christie’s Paris, Une américaine à Paris - Un pied-à-terre par François Catroux, 11 October 2006, lot 94 (€ 66,000).