French Furniture and Gilt Bronzes: Baroque and Régence, Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Gillian Wilson, Charissa Bremer-David, and Jeffrey Weaver
With Brian Considine and the staffs of the Department of Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation and the Getty Conservation Institute

The exceptional collection of French decorative arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum contains more than four hundred objects, most of them dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This gorgeously illustrated volume brings together forty-four objects from the Baroque and Régence periods, roughly corresponding to the reign of Louis XIV and the years immediately following his death in 1715. The selection includes richly veneered cabinets, commodes, and desks; carved tables and chairs; and gilt-bronze light fixtures and firedogs that exemplify the superior craftsmanship and elaborate design characteristic of the Baroque style.

Each object is described and analyzed in terms of its style, use, provenance and published history, as well as its construction and alterations, materials, and conservation. With its painstaking attention to detail, this sumptuous volume is the definitive catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection of French Baroque furniture and will be of interest to scholars, conservators, and all students of the French decorative arts.

Gillian Wilson is curator emerita in the Department of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Charissa Bremer-David and Jeffrey Weaver are curator and associate curator, respectively, in the same department. Brian Considine is senior conservator in the Department of Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

"The J. Paul Getty Museum and the authors are to be congratulated on a sumptuous catalogue of a magnificent collection, a splendid contribution to the literature on French furniture."
—Burlington

"This is a model catalogue of a major collection."
—The Furniture History Society