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Lot Essay
The design for these superb presse-papiers is related to the work of Jacques Caffiéri (1678-1755), sculpteur, fondeur et ciseleur du Roi. Closely comparable bronze groups on ormolu rococo bases are in the Wallace Collection, cats S206 and S207 (Sir J.G. Mann, Wallace Collection Catalogues. Sculpture, London, 1981, p. 76, pl. 52). The animals with which each youth is depicted indicates that they may represent the goddesses Venus and Diana in infancy, with their attributes. The bases of the present figures, both in their restrained form and their construction - with thin soldered plates to the underside of the stepped rectangular plinths - are more characteristic of the first half of the 18th century, however, the bronze groups themselves are typical of the rococo.
MADAME DUBERNET-DOUINE
This pair of presse-papiers was previously in the celebrated collection of Madame Dubernet-Douine (1857-1945) - born Anne-Marie Dubernet, known as Cyprienne, then Madame Olympe Hériot, and later Madame Roger Douine. She was a French patron of the arts and philanthropist who had been born the daughter of a wool-spinner and started life selling corsets in the Grandes Magasins du Louvre. In 1887 she married the director-proprietor Olympe Hériot (1833-1899), who was 25 years her senior, and had four children with him: including Virginie Hériot (1890-1932), the celebrated yachtswoman and wife of Viscount François de Saint-Senoch. The Hériots moved to a hôtel particulier on the rue Euler in Paris in 1894. She was widowed shortly thereafter in 1899, inheriting her husband's fortune, with which she commissioned a new and extravagant hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie, built by the architect Georges Tersling, who had already worked for Olympe Hériot at his country estate, the château de la Boissière near Rambouillet, circa 1890. She was remarried in 1908, to Roger Hippolyte Douine (d. 1925). Her collection, including Impressionist paintings, Old Masters and 18th-century furniture and tapestries, graced her many homes in Paris and the country. Towards the end of her life her collection was concentrated at the château de la Boissière, and was sold after her death in a sale in Paris in 1946. Many of the lots sold in 1946 were subsequently sold in a sale of her grandson, Hubert de Saint-Senoch's (b. 1913) collection in 1983. However, although the present lot was spuriously noted as no. 142 from Madame Dubernet-Douine's sale in the 1983 catalogue, it does not in fact appear in the 1946 sale, and must have been inherited by M. de Saint-Senoch by descent.
MADAME DUBERNET-DOUINE
This pair of presse-papiers was previously in the celebrated collection of Madame Dubernet-Douine (1857-1945) - born Anne-Marie Dubernet, known as Cyprienne, then Madame Olympe Hériot, and later Madame Roger Douine. She was a French patron of the arts and philanthropist who had been born the daughter of a wool-spinner and started life selling corsets in the Grandes Magasins du Louvre. In 1887 she married the director-proprietor Olympe Hériot (1833-1899), who was 25 years her senior, and had four children with him: including Virginie Hériot (1890-1932), the celebrated yachtswoman and wife of Viscount François de Saint-Senoch. The Hériots moved to a hôtel particulier on the rue Euler in Paris in 1894. She was widowed shortly thereafter in 1899, inheriting her husband's fortune, with which she commissioned a new and extravagant hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie, built by the architect Georges Tersling, who had already worked for Olympe Hériot at his country estate, the château de la Boissière near Rambouillet, circa 1890. She was remarried in 1908, to Roger Hippolyte Douine (d. 1925). Her collection, including Impressionist paintings, Old Masters and 18th-century furniture and tapestries, graced her many homes in Paris and the country. Towards the end of her life her collection was concentrated at the château de la Boissière, and was sold after her death in a sale in Paris in 1946. Many of the lots sold in 1946 were subsequently sold in a sale of her grandson, Hubert de Saint-Senoch's (b. 1913) collection in 1983. However, although the present lot was spuriously noted as no. 142 from Madame Dubernet-Douine's sale in the 1983 catalogue, it does not in fact appear in the 1946 sale, and must have been inherited by M. de Saint-Senoch by descent.