# Pair of Commodes > Bernard II van Risenburgh (BVRB) - Paris, c. 1750 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/bernard-ii-van-risenburgh/van-risenburgh-pair-of-commodes-getty/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Bernard II van Risenburgh (BVRB) - **Date:** Paris, c. 1750 - **Medium:** White oak carcase veneered with bloodwood, kingwood and amaranth, with walnut and oak drawer linings; cast and gilded bronze mounts; brass, steel and iron locks; breche marble top (a non-original replacement, dated to the 1990s) - **Dimensions:** 86.8 x 101.4 x 56 cm (2 ft 10 3/16 in x 3 ft 3 15/16 in x 1 ft 10 1/16 in), each of the pair - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** French, eighteenth century (Louis XV) - **Current location:** J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A pair of gilt-bronze-mounted commodes stamped B.V.R.B., the mark of the Parisian cabinetmaker Bernard II van Risenburgh, whose own name was unreadable behind that stamp for two centuries until a student's archival research solved it in 1957. The pair belonged to the Saxon royal House of Wettin, was sold out of the family in the early 1930s, was turned down by Duveen Brothers as too heavy and overdecorated, and was eventually bought by the Detroit automobile heiress Anna Thomson Dodge for the breakfast room of her Grosse Pointe mansion because the pieces happened to be the right size.The stranger fact is that the Getty's own scholarship doubts the design is really his. The mounts do not resemble anything else documented from his workshop, and the museum's published catalogue entry says so without hedging: without the stamp, no specialist would call this Van Risenburgh's design on stylistic grounds alone. A pair of matching corner cupboards that once stood with these commodes in Dresden was destroyed in the 1945 bombing of the city, and the story that the whole suite was a royal gift from the Dauphin to his Saxon father-in-law has no surviving document behind it.What is certain is the metal stamp, the guild mark beside it, and the paper trail that runs from an eighteenth-century Dresden palace inventory through a deposed prince, a Berlin dealing family, a Parisian decorating house, and a widow's Michigan mansion to a Los Angeles museum. What is not certain is whether the object the stamp names is the object the mounts show. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1750-unknown** Workshop of Bernard II van Risenburgh, Paris `[disputed]` (manufacture) The maker's stamp B.V.R.B. is physically present and undisputed as a guild mark. Whether the pair's design and mounts genuinely represent Van Risenburgh's own workmanship, rather than a departure built to a client's specification, is an open scholarly question raised in the Getty's own catalogue entry. - **unknown-1798** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No document records the commodes between their manufacture and the 1798 Dresden inventory addendum. The tradition that they were a gift from the Dauphin Louis to Frederick Augustus II of Saxony around the time of the 1747 marriage of the Dauphin to Maria Josepha of Saxony is repeated in the trade and in the Getty's own catalogue, which states plainly that no document proves it. - **1798-c. 1924** House of Wettin (Albertine line), rulers of Saxony `[documented]` (documented presence) Recorded in an addendum to the inventory of the Kurlander Palais, Dresden, in 1798. Intermediate holders within the family across the nineteenth century are not individually named in the sources consulted. - **c. 1924-early 1930s** Prince Ernst Heinrich von Wettin `[documented]` (family ownership) Son of Frederick Augustus III, the last King of Saxony, who abdicated in 1918. The commodes were kept at Schloss Moritzburg, in the palace's Porzellanquartier, near Dresden. - **1925** Duveen Brothers (offered, declined) `[documented]` (offer declined) Duveen Brothers' own correspondence, quoted in the Getty's catalogue, describes the pair as 'too rich [and] heavy made probably for [the] German market' and, in a separate note, records an asking price of 10,000 pounds and the writer's view that the pieces were small and over-decorated. Duveen did not buy them. - **early 1930s-1934** Alexander Ball, dealer (Paris and New York, out of his father Hermann Ball's Berlin firm) `[documented]` (purchase from the Wettin family) Ball acquired the commodes from Prince Ernst Heinrich von Wettin in the early 1930s and sent them to America to the decorating house of Jansen. No source consulted documents any specific duress, persecution or forced-sale circumstance attached to this transaction beyond the general context of the family's post-1918 financial retrenchment and the timing within the early Nazi period; this record states the fact of the sale and does not assert more. - **1934-1970** Anna Thomson Dodge `[documented]` (purchase and display) Seen at the decorator Jansen's and bought, according to the Getty's catalogue, mainly because the pair fit the breakfast room at Rose Terrace, her house on Lake St Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, completed in 1934 to the design of Horace Trumbauer. - **1970-1971** Estate of Anna Thomson Dodge `[documented]` (estate held in trust) Dodge died in 1970. The Music Room's contents went directly to the Detroit Institute of Arts by her will; this pair remained with the general estate pending sale. - **1971** French and Company, New York, acting for the J. Paul Getty Museum `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Sold at Christie's, London, 24 June 1971, lot 102, as part of the estate sale of Anna Thomson Dodge's collection. No hammer price or premium figure specific to this lot is published in the sources consulted. - **1971-present** J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles `[documented]` (acquisition) Accessioned as 71.DA.96.1-.2. Displayed in Detroit at the exhibition 'The J. Paul Getty Collection of French Decorative Arts', Detroit Institute of Arts, October 1972. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1971-06-24** Christie's, Estate sale of Anna Thomson Dodge, French furniture and works of art, Christie's, London, lot 102 - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted - Hammer: Not published in the sources consulted - With premium: Not published in the sources consulted - The Getty's own catalogue entry cites this sale and lot number as the source of its acquisition but does not itself publish a hammer or premium figure, and no other source consulted for this record supplies one. Only the total realized by the entire multi-lot sale has been reported in general coverage of the Dodge estate, which is not a price for this lot and is not used here. ## Exhibitions - The J. Paul Getty Collection of French Decorative Arts, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (3 October 1972 - 31 August 1973; this pair shown 3 October - 17 December 1972), 1972 ## Literature - 1957, Jean-Pierre Baroli, 'Le mysterieux BVRB enfin identifie', Connaissance des Arts, March 1957, pp. 56-63. - 1989, Alexandre Pradere, French Furniture Makers: The Art of the Ebeniste from Louis XIV to the Revolution, J. Paul Getty Museum. - 2000, Pierre Ramond, Masterpieces of Marquetry, vol. 2, J. Paul Getty Museum. - 1975, Gillian Wilson, 'The J. Paul Getty Museum: 6eme partie', Connaissance des Arts 279 (May 1975), pp. 107-13. - 1996, Gisela Haase et al., Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden in Schloss Pillnitz, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. - 1971, Christie's, London, sale catalogue, 'The Highly Important Collection of French Furniture and Works of Art' (estate of Anna Thomson Dodge), 24 June 1971, lot 102. ## Open questions - Where were the commodes, and where was the rest of the suite, before the 1798 Kurlander Palais inventory addendum records them in Dresden? No earlier document has been found. - Is the tradition that the Dauphin Louis gave the suite to Frederick Augustus II around the time of the 1747 marriage true? The Getty's own catalogue states plainly that no document proves it. - If the mounts are not typical of Van Risenburgh's documented output, who designed them, and were they cast to a foreign client's specification rather than the maker's own choice? Scholars have raised the possibility without being able to document it. - What price did the pair make at Christie's, London, on 24 June 1971, as lot 102? No hammer price or premium figure for this specific lot is published in the sources consulted. - Was Alexander Ball's acquisition of the commodes from Prince Ernst Heinrich von Wettin in the early 1930s connected to any specific financial or political pressure on the Wettin family beyond the ordinary retrenchment that followed the end of the Saxon monarchy in 1918? No source consulted establishes more than the fact of the sale and its approximate date. - What explains the elevated zinc content, 25 to 28 percent, found in three of the twelve gilt-bronze mounts examined by X-ray fluorescence? The Getty's published technical report records the anomaly without resolving it. ## Sources - [1] J. Paul Getty Museum, catalogue entry for the Pair of Commodes, accession 71.DA.96.1-.2, in French Rococo Ebenisterie in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Source for the accession number, dimensions, materials, marks, condition (missing molding, reveneering, replacement marble tops), the X-ray fluorescence findings, the attribution puzzle and its exact wording, the Dresden suite (corner cupboards and further commodes) and the destruction of the corner cupboards in 1945, the unproven Dauphin-gift tradition, the 1798 Kurlander Palais inventory, the ownership by Prince Ernst Heinrich von Wettin, the Duveen Brothers 1925 correspondence quotations, the sale via Alexander Ball and the decorator Jansen to Anna Thomson Dodge in 1934, and the 1971 Christie's sale (lot 102) and Getty acquisition via French and Company. - [2] J. Paul Getty Museum, catalogue entry for a related single commode by Bernard II van Risenburgh, accession 72.DA.46, in French Rococo Ebenisterie in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Used for general context on Van Risenburgh's documented workshop practice, lacquer commissions and the cohort of comparable commodes attributed to him. - [3] TERTIARY, flagged for replacement with Baroli's original article or a scholarly monograph. Wikipedia, 'Bernard II van Risamburgh'. Source for the family's three generations, guild mastership dates, work through the marchands-merciers Hebert, Duvaux and Poirier, supply to Marie Leszczynska and Madame de Pompadour, the porcelain-plaque innovation, his documented marquetry and lacquer specialty, and his 1764 retirement and death. - [4] TERTIARY, flagged for replacement with Jean-Pierre Baroli's 1957 article itself. Ateliers Allot, 'BVRB: the mysterious story of a stamp'. Source for Pierre Verlet's earlier wrong guess at the stamp's meaning, Baroli's identity as Verlet's student at the Ecole du Louvre, his archival method in the notarial records of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the discovery of the Van Risenburgh family name and its variant spellings, and the note that Bernard III never sought guild mastership and later worked as a plaster modeller. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Rose Terrace (Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan)'. Source for Anna Thomson Dodge's biography, her marriage to Horace E. Dodge and later to Hugh Dillman, the construction of the second Rose Terrace by the architect Horace Trumbauer (completed 1934), the couple's two years in Europe consulting Joseph Duveen while furnishing the house, the bequest of the Music Room's contents to the Detroit Institute of Arts on her death in 1970, the 1971 Christie's sale of the remaining contents, and the house's 1971 historic designations and 1976 demolition. - [6] TERTIARY, a provenance-research blog, flagged for replacement with an institutional Nazi-era provenance database entry if one exists for this object. Open Art Data, 'Artworks linked to A&R Ball'. Source for the identification of Alexander Ball as the son of the Berlin dealer Hermann Ball of Ball and Graupe, and for the general background that the Ball family acquired decorative-art works from German aristocratic collections including the Wettins in the early 1930s. The source does not establish, and this record does not assert, any specific persecution, duress or Aryanization connected to this transaction. - [7] Christie's, 'Collecting guide: 18th-century French cabinet-makers'. Source for the 1743 guild requirement that every piece of furniture offered for sale be stamped with its maker's mark, and for the JME guild-inspection stamp applied after quality review by elected guild members who examined workshops four times a year. - [8] Wikimedia Commons file page for 'File:Van Risenburgh, one of a pair of commodes.JPG'. Licence verified at fetch time: the artwork is marked {{PD-old-100}} and the photograph itself is released by its photographer, the Wikimedia contributor Henry Townsend, under {{PD-self}}; LicenseShortName returned by the API is 'Public domain'. Source for the physical description of the photographed commode and the marquetry subject (a stag attacked by two hounds), matching the Getty catalogue's own description. - [9] Wikimedia Commons file page for 'File:Commode MET DP105699.jpg', Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 1974.356.189. Licence verified at fetch time: LicenseShortName 'CC0', credited to a Wikimedia Commons donation project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. - [10] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Wallace Collection chest of drawers 'probably by' Bernard van Risen Burgh II (DSC06234). Licence verified at fetch time: LicenseShortName 'CC0', photograph by the Wikimedia contributor Daderot, own work. - [11] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Munich Residenz commode attributed to Bernard II van Risamburgh (DSC07492). Licence verified at fetch time: LicenseShortName 'Public domain', self-photographed by the Wikimedia contributor Daderot. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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