Christie's announced that certain pieces of furniture from the Akkram Ojjeh collection due to be sold on December 11th 1999 in Monaco might have a royal provenance. A Louis 16th black lacquered and bronze gilded commode by Jean-Henri Riesener will notably be sold with a sure provenance as Queen Hortense, wife of Prince Louis-Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, bought it in 1804 but this piece of furniture might have belonged in fact to Queen Marie-Antoinette.
This commode was part of a set produced by Riesener which was acquired for US $ 420,000 by Paris antique dealer Maurice Segoura in 1977 at Sotheby's in Monaco. These pieces of furniture, which came from the Edouard de Rothschild succession, were then listed as national treasures by the French State as there was no equivalent of lacquered pieces by Riesener in the country.
Riesener produced few richly decorated lacquered pieces, which were typical of the taste of Queen Marie-Antoinette and those from the Ojjeh collection might well have been ordered for her apartments in the Tuileries or Versailles palaces, a spokesman for Christie's said.
These pieces were made around 1782 and are similar in style to those which were delivered to the Tuileries palace. However State archives only signalled pieces which was more richly adorned than those from the Ojjeh collection and which are now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
However Riesener delivered three pieces of lacquered furniture sold at a cheaper price than those of the Met. Christie's suggested that the Queen was not really satisfied with these and that she sent them back to him while ordering another set more richly adorned.
Bronze plaques from the pieces of the Ojjeh collection were replaced as holes for other fittings were found under these while Riesener published an advertisement in October 1797 regarding the sale of several lacquered pieces of furniture which were previously destined to Versailles. However, there is no proof that these were those sold later to Queen Hortense.
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