J.P. Morgan Herter Brothers Cabinet Coming To Auction

The sale will feature an important Herter Brothers painted and gilt maple cabinet made c.1880-1882 for the financier, banker and art collector J. Pierpont Morgan. In 1880, Morgan purchased a c.1853-1856 brownstone house at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 36th Street, New York City. He commissioned the New York firm of Herter Brothers to remodel the house and to decorate and furnish the interior. The project was overseen by Christian Herter, who worked closely with Morgan's wife, Frances Morgan, on the interior decoration and on the selection of textiles and other furnishings. For the drawing room, the firm created a "Pompeian" decorative scheme featuring dado paneling painted ivory with gold flecks, pilasters and frieze in Pompeian red and a mosaic-style coved ceiling. Herter Brothers also provided much of the furniture, which included the cabinet offered for sale. The cabinet’s ivory paint with gold flecks, red highlights and gilt details echoed the ivory, red and gold color scheme of the drawing room's decoration. The cabinet can be clearly seen in a photograph of the Morgan drawing room, published in 1883 in George Sheldon's "Artistic Houses." A year after the Morgan commission was completed, Herter Brothers decorated the drawing room of the Oliver Ames house in Boston and supplied a very similar cabinet, which is now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published: George William Sheldon, "Artistic Houses, Being a Series of Interior Views of a Number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States with a Description of the Art Treasures Contained Therein," New York, 1883; Arnold Lewis et al., "The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age," New York, 1987, p. 146 (for a period photograph showing the cabinet in situ in the drawing room at 219 Madison Avenue); Doreen Bolger Burke, et al., "In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement," 1986, p. 167 (for an illustration of the Morgan cabinet); Katherine S. Howe et al., "Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age," 1994, pp. 86-88 (for a discussion of the 1880-1882 Morgan commission) and p. 85 (for a period photograph of the drawing room with cabinet in situ).