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for Jean-Henri Riesener
Jean-Henri Riesener
French
French cabinetmaker of German birth. He was first apprenticed to Jean-François Oeben and later became his workman. After Oeben’s death (1763) until 1768, Riesener directed his workshop at the Arsenal, Paris, where he remained until 1800, under the nominal authority of Oeben’s widow whom he married in August 1767. He used the stamp j. f. oeben. Through his wife Riesener became related to the cabinetmakers Simon Oeben (d 1786), Roger Vandercruse and Martin Carlin, and to the bronze-caster Antoine-André Ravrio. He was the father of the painter Henri-François Riesener (1767–1828) and grandfather of the painters Léon Riesener (1808–78) and Eugène Delacroix. He became a maître-ébéniste on 23 January 1768.
In 1769 Riesener became supplier to the Garde Meuble de la Couronne, under the patronage of Pierre-Elizabeth de Fontanieu ( fl 1767–84), the Intendant et Contrôleur-Général des Meubles de la Couronne. Riesener gradually took over from Gilles Joubert and in 1774, after buying up the latter’s stock, Riesener received the official title of Ebéniste du Roi. For 12 years, until the appointment of Guillaume Beneman, he almost entirely refurnished the royal palaces, numbering among his clients Louis XVI, the royal princes and princesses and many distinguished patrons in Paris and at court. Even after his fall from official favour—due to animosity on the part of Fontanieu’s successor, Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville d’Avray (1732–92), who found Riesener’s costs too high—he remained the favourite cabinetmaker of Marie-Antoinette, who continued to order her furnishings from him until the French Revolution (1789; see fig.). Riesener rapidly built up a large fortune and Antoine Vestier’s portrait of him (1785; Versailles, Château) gives evidence of his success.
Although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish his early works marked with Oeben’s stamp from Oeben’s own, there is no doubt that Riesener played an essential part in creating the famous Bureau du Roi Louis XV (1769; Versailles, Château; see [not available online]) started by Oeben, with its ingenious system of springs allowing the roll-top to be raised or lowered by a single button. This bureau forms an almost exact pair with one made at the same time for the Comte d’Orsay (London, Wallace) and is similar to others intended for members of the royal family (e.g. London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.; Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT; Lisbon, Mus. Gulbenkian). This first period of Riesener’s work, with its broad, vigorous style, powerful lines and grand decoration, reached its peak in December 1775 when he delivered the commode (Chantilly, Mus. Condé) for Louis XVI’s bedchamber at Versailles. The ultimate expression of this style was found in the commodes and four corner-cupboards (1786; Versailles, Château) for the Salon des Jeux de la Reine at Versailles.
After 1776 Riesener developed a new, lighter style with lacy gilt-bronze mounts in addition to his earlier style; the former later dominated his work. Examples include such small pieces of furniture as the Marly Table (Scone Pal., Tayside), a small table (Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT) and a console table (London, priv. col.) from the Cabinet de la Méridienne at Versailles, and such majestic pieces as Marie-Antoinette’s secrétaire and lacquered commode (New York, Met.) or the lacquered secrétaire with doors decorated with gilt-bronze caryatids (1785; Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.). Furniture decorated with simple lozenge-shaped marquetry, as is, for example, Marie-Antoinette’s cylinder-top desk (Paris, Louvre) from the Tuileries, also belongs to this period, as does the sober, mahogany furniture with restrained gilt-bronze decoration .
Riesener made all types of furniture, and his versatility enabled him to work in marquetry, mahogany veneering, lacquer and even mother-of-pearl, with which he decorated the cylinder-top desk (1786) and the silvered and gilt-bronze table for Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir at the château of Fontainebleau (both in situ). He constantly renewed his designs and developed his own mosaic–marquetry motif, inspired by geometric Japanese lacquer decoration, in which flowers and squares were enmeshed in a skilfully interlaced, chequered pattern of natural oak and black-stained alder fillets. Riesener continued the technique of floral marquetry practised by Oeben’s workshop, creating clearly differentiated and recognizable flowers and maintaining a concern for naturalism, introducing stained woods in such colours as green, red and blue. These stains were successful only when applied to such light woods as pear, cherry, sycamore or plane. His compositions of bouquets, baskets and vases of flowers, and the various trophies that decorate his furniture, indicate his superior talent as a designer (e.g. commode, 1776; Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT). The bronze mounts on his pieces were made by such bronze-casters as Jean-Claude Chambellan Duplessis, Louis Hervieu, Ravrio, Etienne Martincourt, Gobert, Pierre-Philippe Thomire, Pierre Gouthière, François Rémond and the Forestier family.
Although attempts were made to copy and imitate his furniture, Riesener was never equalled; just before the French Revolution he brought French cabinetmaking to an extraordinary degree of perfection. After the Revolution he could not recover sums owed to him by the state. He did not believe that the abolition of the monarchy was permanent, and he used his cash assets to buy back his own masterpieces. Political events, however, proved him wrong and he was unable to resell the furniture which, after 1795, no longer suited French taste. Even at a later date Napoleon refused to buy back the Comtesse de Provence’s jewellery-cabinet (London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.). Although Riesener produced some furniture under the Directoire (1795–9), it was uninventive and undistinguished.
"Riesener, Jean-Henri." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T072101 (accessed March 7, 2012)
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