Neoclassicism - The Netherlands

The demand for fashionable English or French handmade furniture became so great in Holland in the 1760s that the prosperity of Dutch craftsmen was seriously threatened, and in 1771 all imports became banned except for a limited quantity permitted for an annual fair.
Craftsmen benefited from this measure of protection and Dutch furniture in the Neoclassical style reached a high standard. To distinguish Dutch pieces from foreign imports, members of the Amsterdam guild of St Joseph had to mark each piece with the arms of the city and the initials 'J.G.' (Joseph Guild).

The Dutch woodworkers digested styles from abroad, blending them to produce one that was characteristically their own. Armchairs with rectangular backs followed Louis XVI types, but were made in mahogany and carved in the English manner. Carcase pieces such as commodes are mounted on heavy square tapered feet. The typical Dutch commode of the period is rectilinear and has a wooden top, around which runs a low gallery, veneered with alternating pieces of ebony and light coloured wood, set diagonally to produce a striped effect. Satinwood was extensively used in association with oriental lacquer, or with the excellent Dutch imitation of it.

A characteristically Dutch piece of the period was a pieces of non fitted furniture, a low cabinet or commode with a hinged top. When opened, the inside of the lid has shelves which are also hinged and can be made rigid. Set in these shelves is a pewter cistern for water. A pair of extension leaves, hinged to the ends, can be opened out sideways to form a working top and to reveal a pewter bowl in a cut-out space below. The function of this luxurious sink unit was to provide facilities for washing glasses in the drawing-room.

The bombe-based wardrobe continued for a time with fashionable modifications to the decoration but was ultimately replaced with a rectilinear form. The traditional kas, or cupboard, continued to be made, especially in farming areas, with decoration of wither flowers in a polychrome or Neoclassical subjects en grisaille on a pine structure. Pine was also used for oval and other shaped tea tables on tripod bases, again with painted decoration that occasionally reached a very high artistic level.

Neoclassicism - Portugal and Latin America

Following a disastrous earthquake in 1755, the government of Portugal was largely in the hands of Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho (later Marquess of Pombal, by which name he is best known), who took charge of the necessary reorganisation and gained complete ascendancy over the king, Joseph I (reigned 1750 - 1777). Employing arbitrary and at time ruthless methods, Pombal succeeded in building up the economic strength of the country and limiting the power of British merchants in Portugal. In spite of this last reform, English influence on Portuguese handmade furniture, already quite marked, tended to increase. An early form of the convertible bed-settee, of which relatively few English examples now exist, became very popular in Portugal and was known as a leito a inglesa. 

The true Portuguese bed, however, owed little to any other country and certainly nothing to England. Having long ago discarded the posts of tester, the Portuguese adapted their beds to the Neoclassical style of making them more architectural in form and by decorating the headboards with fine marquetry employing Pompeiian features.

Among articles of seat furniture, the influence of late 18th century English styles was evident. During the earlier years of the melancholic Queen Maria I (reigned 1777 - 1816), there was a marked absence of comfortable, French-style armchairs. Instead, there was a fashion for suites of chairs and settees (dioradinhas) of framed construction. They were extremely prim-looking, the settees formed on the principal of three rectangular chair-backs joined together, standing on square tapered legs, in the manner of Hepplewhite or Sharaton. They were painted with urns, pendant husks and flowers en grisaille - a French term describing painting in tones of grey, green and buff, and originally used on walls to simulate architectural details and sculpture but often employed on fitted and non fitted furniture for depicting other subjects.

The 'Donna Maria' commode was rectilinear and break-fronted with an unusually deep apron below the break. It was three drawers deep, each drawer being fitted with enamelled handles. The top was of marble. Semicircular shapes were also popular for small commodes, made in pairs, and for gaming tables. It was a prosperous period in Portugal and money was available for such luxurious pieces as the cylinder-top commode enriched with parquetry on the cylinder, marquetry on the drawer-fronts and quartered veneers on the ends.

One of the new Lisbon makers who was in the habit of signing his work was Domingos Tenuta, who flourished in the last years of the century and who sometimes embossed his name on leather tablets concealed in one of the secret drawers with which 18th century bureaux abounded.

In 1808 the court exiled itself to Brazil and the Neoclassical style was introduced into that country. Neoclassicism was very late arriving in Latin America; Father Joseph Schmidt is said to have introduced it to Peru. Immigrants from many lands arrived with ideas and varying ability to execute them. The more sophisticated pieces are decorated with rather old fashioned looking marquetry, more Baroque than Neoclassical in spirit but the new style was observed in the increased use of straight lines for actual shapes, where previously a delight in curves had triumphed.

Neoclassicism - Spain

The Neoclassical style reached Spain during the reign of Charles III (reigned 1759 - 1788) and continued during that of Charles IV (reigned 1788 - 1802) in a composite version derived from Italy, France and England. A recognisable Spanish flavour nevertheless emerged.
Matias Gasparini, a Neapolitan, became director of the royal workshops at Madrid in 1768, after which date handmade furniture such as commodes of both curvilinear (sarcophagus-shape) and rectilinear (break-front) types are decorated with marquetry in the Milanese manner, often with profiles of Roman emperors on their fronts, or with painting of grotesque masks, figures and wreaths in the 'Pompeiian' style of Naples.
Another favourite form of embellishment was the countersinking of small pieces of mirror glass. Mahogany pieces were seldom left plain, but decorated with marquetry on rectangular or diamond-shaped panels.

There was a great demand for non fitted furniture such as small tables suitable for writing, gaming or taking refreshment. These stood on square tapered legs, their surfaces being covered in marquetry. Where bronze mounts would be used on a French equivalent - as at the tops of the legs - on Spanish examples they are simulated in marquetry.
Chairs with open backs, also standing on square tapered legs, show English influence, while others are of the French en gondole type, derived from ancient Greek originals, in which the backs are composed of panels, rounded laterally to receive the human frame in comfort and painted or inlaid with Neoclassical motifs. The proportions of Spanish chairs are often strikingly exaggerated: very narrow, lyre-shaped backs are perched over very large, round seats which rest on turned tapered legs.
A complex result emerged from Spanish interpretations of Neapolitan adaptations of basically English types, as in the case of chair backs composed of interlaced geometric patterns. These were usually painted and 'parcel gilt' - i.e. details of turning and carving were picked out in gold leaf.

Beds became structurally simpler, the tester being dispensed with entirely and the headboard taking on a new importance with painted decoration, often lavish, in the Pompeiian style.

Peasant furniture was little affected  by these fashionable developments, although there was more of it, at least during the earlier years of this period, thanks to social reforms carried out by Charles III. This improvement was largely nullified by Charles IV.

Neoclassicism - France - Part 3

The chair-maker preferred by the Crown was Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sene (1748 - 1803), who became maitre in 1769 and fournisseur de la Coronne in 1785, making lyre-back chairs and others in mahogany. He often placed a fluted column at each side of the central panel on gilt examples, accompanied by a leg with a neat barley-sugar twist. Jean-Demosthene Dugourc, a leading exponent of the archaeological approach to Neoclassicism, designed for him.
Sene provided handmade furniture for the bedroom of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau in 1787, which proved to be one of the last major royal commissions before the Revolution, after which he was employed in the production of office furniture for bureaucrats.

These were but a few of the many craftsmen working in the age of Louis XVI, producing most of the principal types of furniture current in the previous reign but modifying them to conform first with the highly decorated early Neoclassical style, and then with the plainer fashion which anticipated the Directoire. Some of them exploited all the succeeding fashions from the Rococo through Neoclassical to Empire. During the Louis XVI period , several types of fitted and non fitted furniture either appeared for the first time or came into much more general use.

Intimate dining rooms for small parties came to be furnished with circular tables on centre pedestals. Food was placed on a kind of open sideboard, the console desserte, supplemented by a 'dumb waiter' with two or three tiers, the serviteur fidele, from which diners helped themselves after the servants had been discreetly dismissed. The break-front commode of rectilinear form, which replaced the bombe version, sometimes had drawers or cupboard space concealed by sliding panels. For bow-fronted cabinets or roll-top desks, the tambour became a popular method of enclosure. It consisted of narrow fillets of wood laid closely together and glued onto a canvas backing which travelled within grooved guides. The secretaire-a-abattant (fall-front secretaire), although by no means a new invention, gained in popularity. The upper stage had a writing leaf which occupied a vertical position when the desk was closed. The lower stage was either a carcase with drawers or cupboard enclosed by doors, or was a table-like, open framework of legs and stretchers. Fine examples were produced in lacquer, marquetry or plain mahogany.

Bourgeois furniture followed closely the fashions set by the court, the elaboration of veneering and mounting in bronze being imitated in less costly forms. The regional furniture of the countryside - the armoires and commodes in fruitwood, oak and walnut - continued to be made much as before. Near the larger provincial towns, the commodes became more rectilinear, and the doors of armoires were sometimes carved with Neoclassical motifs - occasionally the whole area of the door was carved to represent an oval Greek shield. On the whole however, the Louis XV style continued to be used with only very minor modifications. Long, narrow tables were made in ever increasing numbers, standing on square taper legs, and with one or two drawers in the frieze. Occasionally there is an extension leaf at one end. Provided the frieze is not too deep, they made excellent dining tables, but many were made as side tables in farmhouse kitchens and are too low to sit at in comfort. The woods used were mainly from fruit trees and polished to a fine, warm colour, merisier (wild cherry) being especially attractive. Those meant to be sat at were originally provided with pairs of benches.

The more sophisticated, veneered furniture is usually constructed of oak, with drawer sides and bottoms of the same timber. In country furniture, the secondary wood is very often chestnut or poplar. Mortise-and-tenon joints on 18th century French furniture are normally secured with dowel pins and the heads of these are visible on the surface of most pieces that are not veneered.

Neoclassicism - France - Part 2

Riesener's prices proved a little too much for the King, whose chief interest in handmade furniture lay in any mechanical devices or gadgetry forming part of a piece. In 1785, Riesener lost his appointment as cabinet-maker to the King, although the Queen continued to patronise him to the end. He was replaced as ebeniste-du-Roi by another German, Guillaume Beneman (fl.1784 - 1811), whose pieces were more competitive and who was not above revamping other men's work, if it was considered a little old-fashioned, by giving it a new look in the 'Roman' style. An adaptable man, he survived the Revolution and continued to work during the Empire period.

Not all the important makers of the Louis XVI era were German. Rene Dubois (1737 - 1799), belonged to an established French family of craftsmen that also included his father, Jacques (c.1693 - 1763) and a brother, Louis (1732 - 1790). Rene was given a royal appointment by the Queen in 1779 and produced the famous 'Tilsit' table carved with figures (probably by his brother Louis) which was given by the king to the empress of Russia, Catherine II. It is now in the Wallace Collection in London.

Although the name sounds French, Martin Carlin was in fact of German origin. He had worked under Oeben and had married Oeben's sister, Marie-Catherine. Carlin was more of an artist than a craftsman, specialising in small, feminine pieces such as the bonheur-du-jour on which he used Sevres plaques against a ground of ebony. His work is original in conception and refined in execution, but he died relatively poor in 1785.

David Roentgen supplied large quantities of fitted and non fitted furniture both to the crown and to fashionable society in Paris, but as he never had workshops in France, preferring to remain at Neuwied, his career is discussed in the section on Germany.

It was a Frenchman, the artist Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825), who was one of the first to design furniture which attempted to reproduce, using reproduction furniture techniques of the day, as exactly as possible actual pieces of Ancient Roman and Greek work - couches on turned feet, tripod stands, chairs of klismos form with sabre legs, stools of Roman curule shape on X-curved supports.
Many of these ideas were no doubt derived from Greek pots, of the red-figure or black-figure kind, which often depicted figures of people using furniture; it may be significant that in having these designs executed for his own use and for the Comte d'Artois, David's colour scheme was mainly black and red. David was trained by J.M. Vien (1716 - 1809), with whom he went to Rome, and who was a pioneer of Neoclassical painting. It is perhaps not altogether irrelevant that some of those - David among them - who adopted this later, more pedantic Neoclassical style in France were equally revolutionary in their politics, supporting the anti-monarchist movement and going on to serve the Directoire and the Empire of Napoleon.

David's furniture a la grecque was made for him by Georges Jacob (1739 - 1814), who was of Burgundian peasant stock. He was appointed a maitre of the guild in 1765 and acknowledged as a leading maker of seat furniture by c.1780. His chairs in the earlier Louis XVI style have rectangular backs, and the frames are finely carved with flowers and classical motifs. He was especially fond of carving a marguerite on the seat-rail. He avoided painting and gilding whenever possible, preferring natural wood, particularly mahogany, which had not previously been fashionable in France.

It was well suited to the later, more severe Louis XVI style initiated by David, and Jacob employed it for X-framed stools and chairs, lyre-backed chairs, sabre-legged seats of various kinds and for furniture other than seats. Although not much employed by the court, he was owed large sums of money by the aristocracy when the Revolution began; he was never paid, many of his clients having gone to the guillotine. Thanks to the support of David, he was given an entree into the austere world of the new regime.

Neoclassicism - France - Part 1

The Neoclassic style was introduced into France only gradually, bronze mounts and handles being the first details to be affected by the return to symmetry, and the cabriole leg the last Rococo feature to be ousted in favour of vertical types. French Neoclassicism is commonly associated with the reign of Louis XVI but Cochin, who had been in Italy c.1750, was decrying the wastefulness of the Rococo in a supplication addressed to goldsmiths and sculptors in 1754 - the year that the future Louis XVI was born, and 20 years before he became king.

The first designs for Neoclassical handmade furniture to be published in France were those of Jean-Francois Neufforge (1714 - 1791), which appeared in 1765 and 1768. His 'medal cabinets' are monumental constructions and suggest a revival of the Louis XIV style at its most opulent. One such cabinet has draped figures as term supports and a pediment composed of two Grecian maidens flanking a bust. Neufforge also used sphinxes and other Egyptian motifs, but the style was known too fashionable to Parisian society as gout grec, 'the Greek taste'. Another designer of this heavy style was Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734 - 1791), who made great play with Greek key patterns and laurel wreaths in his engravings, published in 1768, 1773, 1776 and 1785.

Boulle marquetry, a technique which had been rather neglected for some years, was now used again, as was pietre dure. Panels of this work is inlaid, coloured stones were not infrequently taken from Louis XIV pieces and re-used on break-front commodes of the Louis XVI period. One of the eminent cabinet-makers who adopted this practice was Adam Weisweiler (c.1750 - x.1810), who was among the many Germans who settled in Paris in response to the great demand the for expensive fitted and non fitted furniture. There is little or no evidence that they were actively encouraged to come by the Queen, Marie Antoinette, as is often suggested, but the extravagance of court circles was no doubt a sufficient inducement. Weisweiler worked for the Roentgen family at Neuwied before setting up in Paris in 1778, where he operated mainly through the dealer Dominique Daguerre.

Weisweiler seldom executed marquetry, preferring plain mahogany in combination with sheer black lacquer, sometimes inset with Sevres porcelain plaques. He specialised in small, delicate pieces such as the chiffoniere, originally a narrow chest-of-drawers, known as a semainier when it was seven drawers - one for every day of the week.

Characteristic features of Weisweiler's work are legs which revive in a highly refined way the barley-sugar twist, and which are often joined by curiously interlaced stretchers. He used bronze mounts, including some in the form of sphinx heads, which were of exceptional quality. The mounts were frequently supplied by Pierre Gouthiere (1732 - c.1812), one of the finest makers of bronze mounts, clock-cases and ornaments, who perfected a process whereby part of the surface was left matt while the rest was polished. He seldom signed his work, although objects of art bearing bogus signatures are not uncommon. He went bankrupt in 1788 and was irretrievably ruined by the Revolution in the following year. It is probable that he supplied mounts to J.H. Riesener, the successor to J.F. Oeben. Riesener completed two desks begun by his predecessor, one for Louis XV, which is now at Versailles, and the other for the exiled king of Poland, Stanislaw Leszczynski, who was the father-in-law of Louis. This latter desk is now in the Wallace Collection, and it is one of the very first roll-top desks. It is a type known as a bureau-cylindre, the large kneehole writing-table having a semi-cylindrical cover which encloses the top. These magnificent specimens served as models for later, less sumptuous pieces. Reisener is generally held to be the greatest ebeniste working in Paris during the Louis XVI period, the years 1780 - 1789 being his most productive, when he supplied a great deal of furniture at enormously high prices to Marie Antoinette. He continued to employ marquetry decoration throughout this period, especially on the central panels of break-front commodes, while at the same time producing much plainer pieces with mahogany and satinwood veneers relieved with bronze of an unsurpassed quality.