Louis Majorelle - An Exquisite Art Nouveau Settee c. 1900

A most beautiful Art Nouveau solid padauk settee in the manner of Louis Majorelle and dating from c. 1900 with scroll carved top rail, wonderfully arched back and gilt bronze jasmine flower and leaf mounts to the front feet.

The settee of such beautiful form and proportions, comfortable and well padded. Exceptionally heavy and solid with no movement in any joint.

Louis Majorelle, the son of a cabinet maker, was born in Toul, France in 1859. He trained as an artist and later studied under Jean-Francois Millet at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1879 his father died and he returned to Nancy to take over the family workshop. He focussed on the style of Art Nouveau and began to make hand crafted and beautifully finished furniture conceived in that style. He worked in Mahogany and Walnut and in exotic timbers such as Padauk and Purple Heart (a tall cabinet held by the Victorian and Albert Museum) which he used in the solid on large pieces. He produced sinuous flowing designs, some with elaborate marquetry of flowers, vines, seaweed and fruits and some with similar and botanical gilt bronze mounts – orchids, hawthorn, jasmine and lilies. He was extremely prolific and produced hundreds of designs in every decade from 1880 through to the first half of the 1920s. Many of his pieces bore only a paper label and were not signed.

This settee embodies the modified flowing and sinuous line that typifies his work. It is made in solid Padauk and is of incredible quality. The gilt bronze jasmine flower mounts, the sinuous carving and fine joinery are all very much in the manner of and attributable to Louis Marjorelle.

In 1914 a fire swept through Majorelle’s workshop in Nancy and destroyed all of his furniture in production, catalogues and designs, so that much of his work remains unknown and un-catalogued. See ‘Louis Majorelle Master of Art Nouveau Design’ by Alistair Duncan.

Louis Majorelle died in 1926 at his beautiful Villa Majorelle in Nancy, a house he designed and furnished personally.

The settee has been newly and professionally re-upholstered in a superb quality Versaille gold velvet with three scatter cushions made in Safari black velvet, piped with the gold velvet of the sofa.

In excellent original condition.

An exquisite and stunningly beautiful piece of furniture. By repute purchased from an Art Nouveau exhibition held at Liberty of London in the 1880s