Fit for a queen: a secretaire made by Jean-Henri Riesener for Marie-Antoinette's private apartments at Versailles in 1780 has recently been conserved by the Wallace Collection, using innovatory techniques developed by the museum. As Yannick Chastang and Eleanor Tollfree explain, this delicate project has revealed significant information about Riesener's practices

One of the finest pieces of French royal furniture in the Wallace Collection is the secretaire or desk made for Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1780 by the cabinet maker Jean-Henri Riesener. Its recent conservation provided a unique opportunity to put into practice the innovatory conservation techniques that have been developed and refined during the past ten years by the Wallace Collection's conservation department and also to discover more about the techniques used by Riesener's workshop in the latter part of the eighteenth century. (1)

Riesener's furniture in the Wallace Collection

As described by Peter Hughes in the catalogue of furniture at the Wallace Collection, the collection holds five pieces of furniture made by Riesener for the personal use of Queen Marie-Antoinette (Fig. 1) at the chateau of Versailles and the Petit Trianon. (2) Three of these are secretaires, two supplied for the Queen's private apartments at Versailles and one for her study at the Petit Trianon. The other two objects are a commode with fretwork marquetry and a corner-cabinet veneered with thuya-wood, also made for her apartments at Versailles. (3) The recently-conserved secretaire (Fig. 3) is the earliest piece made by Riesener for Marie-Antoinette in the Wallace Collection. (4) Decorated with exceptionally beautiful pictorial marquetry and gilt-bronze mounts, it is the only one of the three desks that is transitional in style, combining rococo and nee-classical elements of design. There are lively acanthus mounts on the frieze, feet and apron, and vases of flowers depicted in the marquetry on the lower doors and flower sprigs inside a fretwork design (influenced by Japanese lacquerwork) on the side of the secretaire (Fig. 4). By contrast, the striking iconography on the drop-front, including the staff of Mercury (caduceus) and the Gallic cock, together with the male caryatid mounts, are more classical in style and give the secretaire a somewhat masculine feel.

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The history and significance of the secretaire

The secretaire was made in the workshop of one of the most important cabinet-makers in eighteenth-century France, Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) (Fig. 2). (5) Born at Gladbeck in Westphalia, the son of a chair-maker, he moved to Paris at an early age, probably around 1754, to be apprenticed to Jean-Francois Oeben (1721-63), the ebeniste du roi or cabinet-maker to the King. As an apprentice to Oeben, Riesener gained direct experience of the production of luxurious furniture for the royal palaces. Oeben was renowned for his skill at producing furniture decorated with floral marquetry as well as for inventing mechanical devices that enabled furniture to he opened and closed in an ingenious manner. After Oeben's death in 1763, Riesener took over the direction of his workshop and in 1767 married his widow. He qualified as a master (maitre) in his profession in 1768. By 1774 he had been appointed cabinet-maker to the new King, Louis XVI, for whom he started making furniture for the royal palaces, principally Versailles. Extravagant items such as this secretaire show that he continued for some time to work in the style of Oeben, producing furniture that is instantly recognisable for its free pictorial marquetry and skilful mechanical elements.

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The records of the Journal du Garde-Meuble, listing the furniture and other moveable furnishings produced for the royal palaces, reveal that this secretaire was delivered by Riesener on 8 July 1780 for Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. (6) Painted on the top rail on the back is the mark 'No.3037' (Fig. 6), which corresponds to the entry, 'Du 8 dudit [July 1780] ... Livre par le S.Riezener. Pour le service de la Reine a Versailles. 3037'. This is followed by a detailed description of the secretaire. (7) According to an inventory of the same year, it was placed in the Queen's cabinet interieur at Versailles. There it would have formed a glamorous new furnishing that, with its handy snap-shut lock and further double lock, would also have provided a secure home for private accounts and letters. (The term secretaire implies that items could be locked safely inside, away from the prying eyes of other family members, courtiers and servants.)

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Yet the Queen, who even in her lifetime was notorious for her love of the latest fashions and furnishings, soon decided to redecorate her private apartments. By February 1783 she had replaced the secretaire with another by Riesener, also now in the Wallace Collection, this time executed in a more restrained neo-classical style, with the natural speckled pattern of the thuya-wood veneer replacing the floral marquetry of the earlier secretaire (Fig. 13). (8) Instead of the flamboyant gilt-bronze acanthus mounts of the first desk, she now opted for delicate trailing flower mounts depicting some of her favourite scented flowers--roses and pinks, tiny frieze handles in the form of ribbons, and an oval nee classical gilt-bronze relief showing the Sacrifice to Love mounted as if it were hanging from a ribbon pinned over the keyhole on the drop-front.