Levasseur was one of a group of ébénistes working in the third quarter of the eighteenth century who catered to a revival in taste for Boulle furniture. In the case of this piece, a contre-partie Boulle marquetry panel was added to a late seventeenth-/early eighteenth-century chest of drawers. The secretaire was sold to the Prince Regent by Robert Fogg for Carlton House in 1812. It was placed in the South Ante Room, as seen in Charles Wild’s watercolour.