Guillaume Beneman

Who was Guillaume Beneman?

Guillaume Beneman or Benneman was a prominent Parisian ébéniste, one of several of German extraction, working in the early neoclassical Louis XVI style, which was already fully developed when he arrived in Paris. Beneman arrived in Paris already trained; he was settled in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine when he was received master in 1785 by royal command, and rapidly became the last of the royal cabinet-makers before the French Revolution, working under the direction of the sculptor-entrepreneur Jean Hauré, fournisseur de la cour.

In the service of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne he delivered works of irreproachable refinement to the royal residences into the first years of the Revolution. A mark of his humble condition and dependence upon the patronage of the Garde-Meuble is the payment to him in 1788 of 1527 livres, to enable him to purchase workshop tools for sixteen craftsmen.

An example of Beneman's luxurious earlier manner is the commode with Italian pietra dura panels in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Attempts at economizing, as bankruptcy loomed for France in the final years of the Ancien Régime, recommended Beneman in preference to the extravagant Jean Henri Riesener, in 1785 for much of his work he was employed in reconstructing pieces in the royal furnishings or in supplying additional pieces en suite with existing ones, such as the bureau plat delivered 28 December 1786 for Louis XVI's Cabinet Intérieur at Versailles, which, under the artistic direction of the sculptor Jean Hauré, fournisseur de la Cour, meticulously follows the design and decor of the lower section of the Oeben/Riesener Bureau du Roi, or the secretaire in the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum delivered in 1786 by Beneman for Compiègne, where the style was "dictated by certain earlier pieces by Joubert", F.J.B. Watson notes.