Live Auction 21109The Collection of Ann & Gordon Getty: Wheatland
A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED, NASHIJI, BLACK-PAINTED, AND JAPANNED COMMODE
Lot 24

A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED, NASHIJI, BLACK-PAINTED, AND JAPANNED COMMODE

ATTRIBUTED TO PIERRE LANGLOIS, CIRCA 1770

Closed19 October 2023

Price Realised

USD 11,340

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A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED, NASHIJI, BLACK-PAINTED, AND JAPANNED COMMODE
ATTRIBUTED TO PIERRE LANGLOIS, CIRCA 1770
The shaped rectangular top with landscape cartouches within a gadrooned edge above a bombe case decorated with conforming cartouches and opening to shelves, the angles with chutes and sabots, restorations to the decoration including the nashiji ground and ebonized border, dating from the Regency period and later, with printed and inscribed Ann and Gordon Getty Collection inventory label
33 ½ in. (85.1 cm.) high, 60 in. (152.4 cm.) wide, 24 in. (61 cm.) deep

Mrs. Marietta Peabody Tree and the late Mr. Ronald Tree; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 9 October 1976, lot 314.
Supplied by Parish-Hadley, New York, to Ann and Gordon Getty in 1976.

Specialist note


Mrs. Ronald (Marietta Peabody) Tree (1917-1991) was descended from the New England Peabodys, an old and pious family. Mrs. Tree’s grandfather founded Groton school, the American answer to Eton, and her brother Endicott Howard Peabody served for a time as the governor of Massachusetts. Herself a dedicated public servant, Mrs. Tree represented the U.S. in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, appointed under the John F. Kennedy administration and continued to work with the UN on human rights issues for many years.

After the end of her first marriage to lawyer and politician Desmond FitzGerald (1910-1967) in 1947, Marietta married Anglo-American MP Ronald Tree (1897-1976). For a brief time the couple lived in Tree’s Oxfordshire home, Ditchley Park. However, they soon constructed their own Palladian estate in Barbados called Heron Bay, filling it with many items from Ditchley, which they soon-thereafter sold. The Trees also maintained a townhouse in Manhattan, further outfitted with furniture and art from Ditchley Park, and which was known by close friends as ‘Little Ditchley’.