Jean-François Oeben
Encyclopedia
Heinsberg near Aachen - Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
21 January 1763) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
cabinetmaker whose career was spent in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He is the maternal grandfather of the painter Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
.
Nothing is securely known about his training. He was in Paris by about 1740; from 1749 he lived in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. On 29 June 1749 he married Françoise-Marguerite Vandercruse, daughter of the ébeniste François Vandercruse called Lacroix, and so was the brother-in-law of another outstanding cabinet-maker, Roger Vandercruse Lacroix
Roger Vandercruse Lacroix
Roger Vandercruse Lacroix , often known as Roger Vandercruse, was a Parisian ébéniste whose highly refined furniture spans the rococo and the early neoclassical styles....
, who stamped as R.V.L.C..
During 1751 - 1754 he worked as compagnon at the workshop of Charles-Joseph Boulle, son of the great ébeniste of Louis XIV, André-Charles Boulle, and then independently in premises in the Galleries of the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
sublet to him by Boulle. From 1754 he was granted premises, at first at the Manufacture des Gobelins, then, in 1756, in workshops and lodgings at the Arsenal.
Though he had workshops under royal appointment, throughout his career the royal cabinet-maker, ébeniste du Roi, was Gilles Joubert
Gilles Joubert
Gilles Joubert was a Parisian ébéniste who worked for the Garde-Meuble of Louis XV for two and a half decades, beginning in 1748, earning the title ébéniste ordinaire du Garde-Meuble in 1758, and finally that of ébéniste du roi on the death of Jean-François Oeben in 1763...
. Oeben worked for the aristocracy sometimes through intermediary marchands-merciers
Marchand-mercier
A marchand-mercier is a French term for a type of entrepreneur working outside the guild system of craftsmen but carefully constrained by the regulations of a corporation under rules codified in 1613.. The reduplicative term literally means a merchant of merchandise, but in the 18th century took...
, providing extremely refined case furniture with marquetry of flowers that gave way, in the last years of his career, to sober geometrical tiled patterns.
Oeben worked extensively for the marquise de Pompadour: in the inventory drawn up after his death there were ten items awaiting delivery to Mme de Pompadour. She had ordered many pieces of furniture from him in 1761, doubtless for the Château de Bellevue
Château de Bellevue
The Château de Bellevue was a small château built for Madame de Pompadour in 1750. It was constructed on a broad plateau in Meudon, above a slope overlooking the Seine to the east, but was demolished in 1823 and little remains....
, and had already paid 17,400 livres on account. In the inventory after her death, there were sixteen commodes "à la Grecque" that must have come from Oeben, who was in the forefront of this first phase of neoclassical style
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
; in the announcement advertising the sale of his stock after his death, it was explicitly stated that all was "in a new style" (Eriksen 1974:208). Not all of the furnishings for Mme de Pompadour had abandoned the rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
manner: at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, a mechanical table stamped by Oeben and his brother-in-law R.V.L.C. has pierced cabriole legs, for an unusual effect of lightness and grace. Its mounts bear Pompadour's armorial bearing, a tower, and R.V.L.C.'s stamp shows that it was one of the pieces in the workshop that was left unfinished at the time of Oeben's death, completed and stamped by Roger Vandercruse.
Oeben's distinguished marquetry
Marquetry
Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels...
appears at its most ambitious on the famous, minutely-documented roll-top Bureau du Roi
Bureau du Roi
The Bureau du Roi , also known as Louis XV's roll-top secretary , is the richly ornamented royal Cylinder desk whose construction was done at the end of Louis XV reign....
, made for Louis XV
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
, which was begun in 1760 and remained unfinished at his death; it was finished and delivered in 1769, signed by Jean Henri Riesener
Jean Henri Riesener
Jean-Henri Riesener was the French royal ébéniste, working in Paris, whose work exemplified the early neoclassical Louis XVI style"....
, but it was Oeben who devised its intricate mechanisms.
The known work of Oeben possesses genuine grace and beauty; as craftsmanship it is of the first rank, and it is typically French in its fluent, idiomatic character. His furniture is found in all the great national collections of decorative arts. The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian is a museum in Lisbon, Portugal, containing a collection of ancient, and some modern art...
has a mechanical table made by Oeben for the comte d'Argenson
Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, comte d'Argenson
Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, comte d'Argenson was a French politician, son of the 1st Marquis d'Argenson and the younger brother of René Louis d’Argenson. d'Argenson became general lieutenant of the Paris police in 1720, 1737 Intendand of Paris and 1743 secretary of state for war...
which opens swing-away secretarial writing surfaces and a tilted reading easel with successive turns of a single key. At the J. Paul Getty Museum is a commode of ca. 1760 stamped by Oeben veneered in parquetry
Parquetry
Parquetry is a geometric mosaic of wood pieces used for decorative effect. The two main uses of parquetry are as veneer patterns on furniture and block patterns for flooring. Parquet patterns are entirely geometrical and angular—squares, triangles, lozenges. The most popular parquet flooring...
and reflecting the "new style" especially in its gilt-bronze mounts; it is fitted with an elaborate locking mechanism typical of Oeben. He is represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum by a pair of inlaid corner-cupboards. These, with a bureau and a chiffonier in the French national Garde Meuble, in which bouquets of flowers are delicately inlaid in choice woods, are his best-known and most admirable achievements.
Oeben has sometimes been confused with his brother Simon-François Oeben (ca. 1725 Heinsberg - 1786 Paris), his employee since 1754, who married the other Vandercruse sister. In particular he is credited with a bureau plat and matching file cabinet for the duc de Choiseul Jean Simon Oeben signed a fine bureau
Chest of drawers
A chest of drawers, also called a dresser or a bureau, is a piece of furniture that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers stacked one above another...
in the Jones collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
. Their sister Marie-Catherine married the ébeniste Martin Carlin
Martin Carlin
Martin Carlin was a Parisian ébéniste, born at Freiburg, who was received master at Paris in 1766.Carlin worked at first in the shop of Jean-François Oeben, whose sister he married. He set up independently in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, an unfashionable quarter of Paris, where few of his wealthy...
in 1759.
His widow married his journeyman Jean-Henri Riesener, who used Oeben's stamp until he was granted its mastership in 1768.