Armchair à la reine

Armchair à la reine
Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené (1748-1803), master in Paris in 1769
Paris, circa 1770-1780
Sculpted and gilt beechwood
Loaned by the Mobilier national, 1927
Inv. MOB NAT GME 1549
© Photo MAD, Paris / Jean Tholance

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Like all the chairs in this room, this armchair is ornately sculpted, indicating that it was made for the drawing room or study of an aristocratic home or royal residence. Sené worked for the royal palaces at Versailles, Saint-Cloud and Fontainebleau, and was among those who did most to propagate the notion of a return to classical sources. The motifs he sculpted in wood are borrowed from architecture: beading, foliation, acanthae, heart-shaped leaf-and-dart moulding, etc.