Adrian Alan
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A Fine Louis XV Style Gilt Bronze Mounted Kingwood Vitrine With Wedgwood Plaque ( c. 1880 )
| Artists: |
FRANCOIS LINKE (1855-1946) |
| Dimensions: | 66.00cm wide 147.00cm high 38.00cm deep (25.98 inches wide 57.87 inches high 14.96 inches deep) |
| Description: |
Of rectilinear form the vitrine has a Breche d’ alep marble top with canted corneres above a frieze with gilt bronze mounts of ribbon tied garlands and centred by mounts depicting bacchanalian cherubs at play. The corners with classical gilt bronze espagnolettes, framing bevelled glass panels to the front and sides. The front apron centred by a a fine Wedgwood Plaque depicting a classical figure, within a gilt bronze ribbon and garland frame flanked by scrolling foliate forms, the whole supported by four cabriole legs with gilt bronze mounts. The interior with glazed back and three shelves.
François Linke was born in Pankratz in Bohemia in 1855 and arrived in Paris at the age of twenty. He died in Paris in 1946. He was the most important Paris cabinet-maker of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, and possibly the most sought after cabinet maker of this period. The quality of his craftsmanship was unsurpassed and was highlighted by his spectacular stand at the Paris Exhibition Universelle in 1900, where his Grand Bureau took a gold medal. The essential theme of his work was sculptural, in a modernised Louis XV style with a hint of the contemporary 'art nouveau', a large proportion of his work being directly copied from eighteenth century examples. However, he was known for the high quality of his work, which had an individualism and inventiveness not matched by his contemporaries. All of Linke's work has the finest, most lavish mounts, very often applied to comparatively simple carcasses of quarter veneered kingwood or tulipwood, without the embellishment of too much marquetry. The technical brilliance of his work and the artistic change that it represented, was never to be repeated. |
| Literature: | Christopher Payne, 'François Linke, 1855 - 1946, The Belle Epoque of French Furniture', 2003, pp.170-171; pl. 131-2, 184, 197-8 |
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