A Continental Directoire Mahogany and Ebonised Wood Guéridon, Circa 1800

Baron and Baroness Fould-Springer, Palais Abbatial de Royaumont, Val d'Oise, France

By descent to Baron Michel Nathaniel de Rothschild (b.1946)

Christie's Paris, 19-21 September 2011, lot 669

The Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, approximately 30 km north of Paris, was built between 1228 and 1235. In 1781, Louis XVI’s chaplain, Henri Eléonore Le Cornut de Balivière, was appointed Abbot, and commissioned Louis Le Masson, a pupil of the neoclassical architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, to build a new abbatial residence in the form of a Palladian villa inspired by the Petit Trianon.

The abbey was nationalised and partially demolished during the French Revolution, but the Abbot's pavilion survived and was acquired in 1923 by Baron Eugène Fould (1876–1929) and his wife Marie-Cécile von Springer (1886-1978). They restored the property and furnished it with their extensive collection of fine and decorative arts, later inherited by their youngest daughter Liliane (1916-2003), who had married Baron Elie de Rothschild in 1942.