Robert Denning - After Fourcade

After Fourcade

Denning 'reinvented' himself to use his own word, after Vincent Fourcade's death from AIDS in 1992. Taking a lighter approach with more emphasis on effect and comfort than signed pieces of furniture, he used to laugh at how he would coach his early clients with decorating their children and grandchildren's homes. He was listed in the AD100, top hundred decorators by Architectural Digest for a number of years and once said: "I'll accept commissions from anyone who isn't frightened by my proposals." Also listed in New York The Top 100 Architects & Decorators and The New York Times Magazine in an article "Who Made It" he was listed as one of 15 interior designers who had become "celebrities in their own right".:

Technology permitting, Robert Denning would happily return to the nineteenth century. Since he can't, he devotes himself to re-creating – with international mixes of opulent furniture – the sumptuous interiors of his favorite era, using damask, silks, and taffetas.

His jobs have appeared not only in AD's pages, but those of every major magazine with home interiors. He always participated in charity benefits such as the auction to benefit Friends In Deed, a counseling organization for people with AIDS and cancer to decorating the main foyer of the von Stade mansion to benefit Southampton's Rogers Memorial Library. He was one of the decorators that contributed to the restoration of the 1932, 50 room mansion, of William Goadby Loew for the Smithers Alcoholism Treatment and Training Center on Manhattan's upper East side. "A sense of humor overlaying a deep commitment to style and a consuming passion for detail characterize all of Denning's work."

During the last decade of his life he tired of Paris, giving up his home that he had shared with Vincent in the 17th arrondissment. He was content in the familiar surroundings of his home and offices in the Lombardy Hotel in New York City, where both the lobby and restaurant were of his design.

He died in his apartment in New York City in 2005. His personal estate was featured in an auction at Doyle New York on May 17, 2006.