Carved Wood Folding Screen À La Bérain, 19th Century

Four-leaf partition screen in carved wood and painted in the Bérain style. Each panel bears on the top a woman’s head wearing a veil and surrounded by a shell motif. The upper part in openwork wood is finely carved and engraved with arabesque and cut-out leathers motifs. The posts are treated as fluted pilasters. The central part is made out of painted canvas with grotesque Bérain drawings with fine symmetrical arabesques and a dancing putto with a ribbon. In the lower molded part is a heraldic motif with an oval coat of arms surrounded by two different birds on each panel: cranes, parrots, vultures and pigeons. The back of the screen is treated without decoration with gold colored silk. It is a work of the eclectic period of the 19th century reproducing the style of the end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century under Louis XIV. Jean Bérain (1640-1711) was an ornamentalist painter who was illustrator of the Chamber and the cabinet of King Louis XIV in 1674. He is responsible for the revival of the grotesque ornament at the end of the 17th century. The style à la Bérain is characterised by compositions of arabesques, dancing figures and foliage treated in a centered and symmetrical manner. The style is also marked by a certain taste for classical architecture. The Bérain style decorations can be found particularly on sculpted decorations and marquetry.