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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RON-SAC |
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RONTGEN, DAVID , sometimes called DAVID DE LUNEVILLE (1743-1807), German cabinet-maker, eldest son of Abraham Rontgen, was born at Herrenhag. In 1753 his,father migrated to the Moravian settlement at Neuwied, near Coblenz, where he established a furniture factory. He learned his trade in his father's workshop, and succeeded to the paternal business in 1772, when he entered into some kind of partnership with the clock-maker Kintzing. At that time the name of the firm appears already to have been well known, at all events in France; but it is a curious circumstance that although he is always reckoned as one of the little band of foreign cabinet-makers and workers in marquetry who, like Oeben and Riesener, achieved distinction in France during the superb floraison of the Louis Seize style, he never ceased to live at Neuwied, where apparently the whole of his furniture was made, and merely had a shop, or show-room, in Paris. We have, as it happens, a record of his first appearance there. The engraver Wille enters in his journal of August 30, 1774, that " M. Rontgen, celebre ebeniste, etabli a Nieuwied, pres de Coblenz, m'est venu voir, en m'apportant une lettre de recommandation de M. Zick, peintre a Coblenz . . . Comme M. Rontgen connaissait personne a Paris, je lui fus utile en lui enseignant quelques sculpteurs et dessinateurs dont it avait besoin." Rontgen was first and foremost an astute man of business and it is not improbable that the moving cause of this opening up of relations with Paris was the accession to the throne of Marie Antoinette, whose Teutonic sympathies were only too well known. Before very long she appointed him her ebenistemechanicien. He appears, indeed, to have acquired considerable favour with the queen, for on several occasions she took advantage of his journeys through Europe to charge him with the delivery of presents and of dolls dressed in the Paris fashions of the momentthey were intended to serve as patterns for the dressmakersto her mother and her sisters. He appears at once to have opened a shop in Paris, but despite, and perhaps because of, the favour in which he was held at court, all was not plain sailing. The powerful trade corporation of the maitres-ebenistes disputed his right to sell in Paris furniture of foreign manufacture, and in 1780 he found that the most satisfactory way out of the difficulty was to get himself admitted a member of the corporation to which all his great
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of his show-rooms and his personal belongings, and after that date he appears neither to have done business in Paris nor to have visited it. Five years later the invasion of Neuwied led to the closing of his workshops; prosperity never returned, and he died half ruined at Wiesbaden on the 12th of February 1807. Rontgen was not a great cabinet-maker. His forms were often clumsy, ungraceful and commonplace; his furniture lacked the artistry of the French and the English cabinet-makers of the great period which came to an end about 179o. His bronzes were poor in design and coarse in executionhis work, in short, is tainted by commercialism. As a marqueteur, however, he holds a position of high distinction. His marquetry is bolder and more vigorous than that of Riesener, who in other respects soared far above him. As an adroit deviser of mechanism he fully earned a reputation which former generations rated more highly than the modern critic, with his facilities for comparison, is prepared to accept. On the mechanical side he produced, with the help of Kintzing, many long-cased and other clocks with ingenious indicating and registering apparatus. Rontgen delighted in architectural forms, and his marquetry more often than not represents those scenes from classical mythology which were the dear delight of the 18th century. He is well represented at South Kensington. End of Article: RONTGEN, DAVID If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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