Roger Vandercruse Lacroix
Encyclopedia
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...
ian ébéniste
Ébéniste
Ébéniste is the French word for a cabinetmaker, whereas in French menuisier denotes a woodcarver or chairmaker. The English equivalent for "ébéniste," "ebonist," is never commonly used. Originally, an ébéniste was one who worked with ebony, a favoured luxury wood for mid-seventeenth century...
whose highly refined furniture spans 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...
and the early neoclassical
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...
styles.
Roger Vandercruse Lacroix, like many outstanding Parisian cabinetmakers since the mid-seventeenth century, was of Low Countries stock, fully acclimatized in Paris, where he was part of a network of outstanding craftsmen: he was the son of a cabinet-maker in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the brother of a clock-maker; in 1749 his sister married Jean-François Oeben
Jean-François Oeben
Jean-François Oeben, or Johann Franz Oeben was a French cabinetmaker whose career was spent in Paris. He is the maternal grandfather of the painter Eugène Delacroix....
, the great ébéniste and mechanicien, whose workshop stock R.V.L.C.— as he stamped his pieces— finished after Oeben's death in 1763, including pieces designed for Oeben's patron, the marquise de Pompadour. His sister, Oeben's widow, then married the foreman Jean-Henri Riesener, royal cabinet-maker to Louis XVI.
Roger Vandercruse Lacroix took over his father's workshops in 1755, when he was received maître in the cabinet-makers' guild, the Corporation des menuisiers-ébénistes
Corporation des Menuisiers-Ébénistes
The Corporation des Menuisiers-Ébénistes was a French craft guild which was concerned with the profession of woodmaking....
; before that, however, he had already been supplying pieces to the ébéniste Pierre Migeon: between 1751 and 1759 he supplied Migeon goods worth 21,700 livres (Eriksen 1974:224).
Roger Vandercruse excelled in the production of commode
Commode
A commode, commode with legs, or commode on legs is any of several pieces of furniture. The word commode comes from the French word for "convenient" or "suitable", which in turn comes from the Latin adjective commodus, with similar meanings.Originally, in French furniture, a commode introduced...
s, and specialized in meubles volants, small fine pieces that could be shifted about to suit the activities of the moment, such as the lady’s writing desks called bonheurs du jour and small tables.
A good deal of R.V.L.C.'s work seems to have been for Parisian 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...
, who would supply him with designs and Chinese lacquer
Lacquer
In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...
screens, to be cut up and applied in lieu of 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...
panels. For such decorator-dealers as Simon-Philippe Poirier he provided furniture mounted with Sèvres porcelain plaques, a luxury decor that Poirier had invented. A mechanical table with a nest of drawers that rise from the top on release of a spring
bears R.V.L.C.'s stamp and Poirier's name written in a drawer. R.V.L.C. often used marquetry designs and gilt-bronze mounts very similar to those used by his brother-in-law Oeben (Eriksen 1974:224)
He even habitually supplied work that was delivered by the ageing ébéniste du Roi 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...
: the R.V.L.C. stamp appears on a commode in conservative neoclassical taste, with pictorial marquetry of vases and trophies of the arts, that was delivered in 1769 by Joubert for Madame Victoire at Château de Compiègne
Château de Compiègne
The Castle of Compiègne is a French château, a royal residence built for Louis XV and restored by Napoleon. Compiègne was one of three seats of royal government, the others being Versailles and Fontainebleau...
, on a commode for the comtesse de Provence
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
at Fontainbleau
Château de Fontainebleau
The Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
in 1771, and on one of a pair of commodes delivered by Joubert for the Salon de Compagnie of Mme du Barry
Madame du Barry
Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry was the last Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.-Early life:...
there in 1772
R.V.L.C. held several important positions in the Parisian cabinet-makers' guild, the Corporation des menuisiers-ébénistes, before retiring from business at the disruption of his clientele by the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and died in 1799.
Pieces by R.V.L.C. figure in all the national collections of decorative arts, and qusi-national ones like that at Waddesdon Manor
Waddesdon Manor
Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. The house was built in the Neo-Renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild . Since this was the preferred style of the Rothschilds it became also known as...
, or the Musée Nissim de Camondo
Musée Nissim de Camondo
The Musée Nissim de Camondo is a non-profit house museum located in the Hôtel Camondo, 63, rue de Monceau, at the edge of the Parc Monceau, VIIIe arrondissement, Paris, France....
, Paris,, and in numerous private collections.