A Boulle chest for the Nelson-Atkins Museum

7/11/24 - Acquisition - Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Galerie Léage recently announced that the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has acquired the chest attributed to André-Charles Boulle that it presented at the last two editions of TEFAF in Maastricht (ill. 1 and 2). This chest is associated with a Boulle marquetry base from the Louis XIV period (ill. 3), which is not original and has undergone subsequent modifications. As stated in the museum’s notice [1], the two pieces appear to have been associated at least since the Christie’s London sale of 20 June 1985. The ensemble, which recently featured among the thousand or so lots to be sold at Sotheby’s in October 2022 from the Al-Thani collection at the Hôtel Lambert (see the news item of 11/10/22), had been acquired by the Qatari prince from the Galerie Perrin in Paris in 2008.

1. Attributed to André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732)
Chest, c. 1685-1700
Base, second half of the 18-th century
Ebony, tortoise shell, brass, pewter and gilt bronze
Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Photo: Sotheby’s

See the image in its page

This model of chest on base is one of the pieces of furniture by Boulle featured in the collection Nouveaux Desseins de meubles et ouvrages de bronze et de marqueterie inventés et gravés par André Charles Boulle published by the cabinetmaker at Mariette around 1710, of which several copies have survived, in the Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin and the Wallace Collection in London. It should be compared with the "Coffre de toilette monté sur son pied" (Toilet chest mounted on its foot) shown on the third engraved plate, a plate that reproduces, in reverse, a large red chalk drawing by André-Charles Boulle, the Étude pour des meubles en marqueterie d’écaille (Study for pieces of furniture in tortoiseshell marquetry) held by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. This…