Secrétaire

Getty Museum

Secrétaire

Creator

Jean-Henri Riesener

French Artist · 1734–1806

All works by this person →

Jean-Henri Riesener's marriage to the widow of his former master, Jean-François Oeben, helped this poor German immigrant become one of the most celebrated *ébénistes* of late eighteenth-century Paris. French guild regulations were carefully arranged to prevent foreign competition; thus, marriage into established families was an important way for foreigners to be accepted into the furniture-making

More on Getty ULAN

Object Description · Getty Museum

The front of this desk, known as a *secrétaire,* drops down to reveal an interior compartment divided into drawers, while the fall front itself becomes a writing surface. The entire body of interior fittings, made of solid mahogany, can be pulled out from the front, revealing secret lidded compartments below. Such shallow pieces of furniture that open or extend into larger objects were invented for the smaller, more intimate rooms of the later half of the 1700s. Although researchers cannot find the Getty Museum's *secrétaire* listed in the royal inventories, it is of the same caliber as other pieces made for Marie-Antoinette and the French court. The mounts are finely chased in their smallest details, and the construction of the piece is of high quality.

Getty Museum’s catalogue record

produced_by.carried_out_by[0].id
https://data.getty.edu/museum/collection/person/e9e34e66-fa84-4a97-8490-d7188c3ecd2d
Artist/Maker
Jean-Henri Riesener
subject_of[Homepage].id
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SDC
Date
about 1785
Medium
Oak veneered with panels of Japanese lacquer and ebony; interior fittings of mahogany; gilt bronze mounts; black marble top
Culture
French
Object Type
Furniture

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Getty Museum’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

View at Getty Museum ↗

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.tQJb44OnbAahHDQv.8XGIWSQxGdDLMDRv96hxjtqn7vGyHE0SSnTHa3Mik-xkdo7HiFPK3MRnomPVT9AoLj1aNI-yE7MRENQkHiE-e2ltxwKkMazshTl_yvVZ2kVilNpmnOFclC90YAEmZedbIzQzid93LNrSUIzVfpVD56VTQjc3pINk9bkq3NNtP-tsR7avmN1yTNvlW1RXV-0otEzR-18fJvtLrByCWltsxq5YFVwf0Djl76wyXIe3x-T7H8Zd7pL_c_lBs3e1jJSg-IOcKEYeMRj9Zzts3wrzOkJ7pQ2xutjFHGhb0PilCzr-u_e4V0eYQs2JcRyFd_Pa_LoXP8AHZFGNDMw18Tg7YpzPenzv8Ue1Zr0bW1xjiuD5Ipwy7Sj4FQi4fe3RakPthRJrxEuCrpW5JFz1FIl9See at Getty Museum QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.dD4L7Q3gHxadNRx3.qDT6fYqCwtAvBwSOt3qsVbDmMJoyetKatCjoeklaozFDHqo1pxhBgsp3xPnBLpwzEfOnutgsSUa9ubtq8G7VR5BN_6jUxZScpRk7qRJBbQpGZKpMDzZLQ6Kuo9ohQxghQ08GqTHm3PtNi2ATFGi3FUy-zhnodawDGM8FYAd_TTS8sE9RsjB4zsS-R_zfofAwfQdUU6ijF1CUKkjSZklv9xEyy6UDzLeNxfnijACbbbBWtXjPXCejQQormplB5tJzr0xQUf4jmgYPM_rta8-NkhtUpBX24QC2ANlaekCC-8FmjqJT-BWQlGDbiey5zIQV8MWldeVJrI1hJkUSNxP5qBjRJnEpFqJ9S9vOJ6tFif6JelfMY618V4MBCAQ
Open this page
See at Getty Museum
How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Getty Museum’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
6d375507-a1df-40b8-a4cf-37ca8c32c766
Object Type
Furniture
  • Getty Museum field “Object Type” · copied as is
Creator
Jean-Henri Riesener
  • Getty Museum field “Artist/Maker” · copied as is
Culture
French
  • Getty Museum field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
Oak veneered with panels of Japanese lacquer and ebony; interior fittings of mahogany; gilt bronze mounts; black marble top
  • Getty Museum field “Medium” · copied as is
Department
Decorative Arts
  • Getty Museum field “Department” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Getty's classification category is stored as department.
Credit Line
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
  • Getty Museum field “Standard Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
  • Getty Museum field “Source Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
Date
about 1785
  • Getty Museum field “Date” · copied as is
Begin Year
1785
  • Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.begin_of_the_begin” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year
1785
  • Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.end_of_the_end” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

Secrétaire

Sep 18, 2026 · Short

YouTubeInstagram
Follow LinkedCultureYouTubeInstagramBluesky
Museum record

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.