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Émile Gallé "Grenouilles" Fruitwood Cabinet
$75,000
This French Art Nouveau "Grenouilles" carved fruitwood cabinet by Émile Gallé features detailed and masterful marquetry depicting dragonflies and mushrooms in a lush, leafy landscape. The beautifully ribbed legs terminate in carved frog-leg feet, while the top gallery features an intricately pierced dragonfly design. The panel for the key escutcheon is cast in bronze with a complementary pattern (left and right) in carved wood, while the cabinet's two doors, veneered with two dragonflies amongst the pickerel rush, open to reveal two interior shelves. The upper right-hand drawer is decorated with a frieze of carved-wood arrowheads, furled into arabesques, that wrap around the cabinet's sides.
- Product Details
- Curator's Notes
Item #: F-17486
Artist: Émile Gallé
Circa: 1900
Dimensions: 62.5" height, 26" width, 15.25" depth
Materials: Fruitwood, Bronze
Signed: “E. Gallé" in two areas
Literature: Similar cabinet pictured in Art Nouveau Furniture, by Alastair Duncan, p. 74, no. 62; Similar cabinet also pictured in Émile Gallé, by Philippe Garner, p. 84
This "Grenouille" cabinet is a rare example of Émile Gallé's use of sand shading. This eighteenth-century technique involves the submersion of veneer pieces in hot sand. This provides a subtle gradation that is visible in the outer serrated margin of the pickerel leaf and the background of the mushroom landscape.