A French gilt-bronze mounted satinwood, sycamore and fruitwood marquetry cabinet by Gervais Durand, late 19th century

Sir Charles Wingfield C.B., KSCI, until sold 20 May 1892;

Lady Cunard, until sold by her executors 31 January 1952;

Sotheby's London, 31 May 1991, lot 212.

Gervais-Maximilien-Eugène Durand (1839-1920) was born in Paris and began work in 1870 at 12 rue de La Cerisaie. He later moved to the rue Saint-Antoine where most of the prestigious cabinet makers of the time had established their workshops. He was the first of three generations of highly successful cabinetmakers, exhibiting widely at the International Exhibitions. At the 1889 Exhibition in Paris, he was commended as, "un ébéniste aussi habile que modeste, qui expose pour la premième fois des meubles de premier ordre, dont il est à la fois le dessinateur et l'exécutant; il marche sur la voie tracée par les maîtres tels que Beurdeley et Dasson".

Sir Charles Wingfield was a prominent civil servant and politician of the High Victorian era. From 1840 to the mid-1860s, he worked in the Bengal Civil Service, during which time he earned his honours: ‘CB’ for becoming a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1860 and then ‘KCSI’ for later also becoming a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India. Once he returned to Britain, he served as the Liberal MP for the new constituency of Gravesend for five and a half years.

After Wingfield’s death in 1892, this table passed into the possession of the Maud Alice Burke, who at this point was still in her native United States and had not yet married Sir Bache Cunard and settled in the UK.  First at the Cunard seat in Leicestershire, then in London, she gained a reputation as one of the most brilliant hostesses and patrons of art in the country, lavishly hosting artists, musicians, politicians and often Wallis Simpson. She had an affair with the author George Moore in the 1890s, who was suspected by some of being the father of Cunard’s daughter Nancy; later, after separating from her husband in 1911, she changed her name to Emerald and had a public romance with the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham.