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Lot Essay
These magnificent chenets epitomise the playful spirit of the rococo style of the 1740s. Boldly sculptural, they are conceived in the form of prancing sea-horses, or chevaux marins, with watery webbed feet, borne aloft in a fantastical manner by cresting waves which seem to defy gravity and which are encrusted with sea shells. Such sea-horses are associated with Triton, the fish-tailed son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, who is often depicted astride a similar mythical marine beast.
Their design derives from a drawing attributed to Lambert-Sigisbert Adam for a chenet with Triton astride a sea horse (P. Fuhring, Design Into Art, The Lodewijk Houthakker Collection, London, 1981, vol. I, fig. 581). A pair of chenets based directly on this drawing, possibly supplied to the comte de Toulouse, was sold anonymously at Christie's, Monaco, 15 December 1996, lot 80. A related pair of chenets in the Louvre (bequeathed by René Fribourg in 1963) featuring tritons and nymphs with similar fish-tail limbs is signed antoine moreau to the reverse, supplying a possible maker for this group.
Chenets incorporating 'chevaux marins' are recorded in the 18th century, including a pair belonging to A.G.H. Bernard de Saint-Saire, grandson of Samuel Bernard, Louis XIV's banker, listed in an inventory of the château de Passy dated 4 May 1747 as 'un grand feu de cuivre représentant un cheval marin appuyé sur des ornements,...le tout doré d'or moulu...' (E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, Histoire de Samuel Bernard et de ses Enfants, Paris, 1904, p. 371); a similar model is described in the Inventory taken after death of the Marquis de Beringhen in 1770, in his Versailles apartment: 'No. 696 Une grille en deux parties...garnie en cuivre doré d'or moulu représentant des chevaux marins, prisé 400 livres'; while 'un feu de forte proportion orné de chevaux marins, sur base a rinceaux d'ornemens, avec sa garniture' was listed as having been in the Paris apartment of citoyen Médécin Cochu in the sale of his property on 3 ventôse An VII (1800).
Only three further pairs of this model without Triton riders on the horses are known: one pair is in the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna; another is in the collection of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Boughton House, Northamptonshire (T. Murdoch, Boughton House The English Versailles, London, 1992, pp. 122-123); and another pair struck with the C couronné poinçon (a tax mark used in France between March 1745 and February 1749 on any alloy containing copper) was formerly in the collection of Dr. Anton C.R. Dreesman, sold Christie's London, 10 April 2002, lot 250.
A further pair of chenets with the same form of base but lacking the seahorses (though possibly originally conceived for them, as there are flat sunken areas on the upper surfaces where the hooves would fit, though no holes for fixing them) is at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire (The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, vol. II, Furniture, pp. 726-7, no. 184). The Waddesdon chenets share the same overall form of asymmetric acanthus base with the Riahi chenets, as well as, interestingly, the same pounced chasing in some areas - a decorative motif more commonly associated with gilt-gesso decoration on English furniture of the early 18th century.
D.D. STRATHATOS
Demetrios Denys Strathatos was a Greek steam ship owner based in Ithaca and Cephalonia. The family shipping company was established by Othon Stathatos in 1883. Stathatos bought the Villa Rêve d'Or in Cannes in 1928 from the Swiss industrialist Paul Girod, who had owned it since 1917. Girod had rented the house for a short time in 1922 to Winston Churchill. Stathatos enlarged the garden and built one of the first swimming pools in Cannes, which remains as the oldest surviving example today, and though the villa no longer exists the garden is protected as a national monument and known as the jardin d'agrément de la Villa Rêve d'Or.
Their design derives from a drawing attributed to Lambert-Sigisbert Adam for a chenet with Triton astride a sea horse (P. Fuhring, Design Into Art, The Lodewijk Houthakker Collection, London, 1981, vol. I, fig. 581). A pair of chenets based directly on this drawing, possibly supplied to the comte de Toulouse, was sold anonymously at Christie's, Monaco, 15 December 1996, lot 80. A related pair of chenets in the Louvre (bequeathed by René Fribourg in 1963) featuring tritons and nymphs with similar fish-tail limbs is signed antoine moreau to the reverse, supplying a possible maker for this group.
Chenets incorporating 'chevaux marins' are recorded in the 18th century, including a pair belonging to A.G.H. Bernard de Saint-Saire, grandson of Samuel Bernard, Louis XIV's banker, listed in an inventory of the château de Passy dated 4 May 1747 as 'un grand feu de cuivre représentant un cheval marin appuyé sur des ornements,...le tout doré d'or moulu...' (E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, Histoire de Samuel Bernard et de ses Enfants, Paris, 1904, p. 371); a similar model is described in the Inventory taken after death of the Marquis de Beringhen in 1770, in his Versailles apartment: 'No. 696 Une grille en deux parties...garnie en cuivre doré d'or moulu représentant des chevaux marins, prisé 400 livres'; while 'un feu de forte proportion orné de chevaux marins, sur base a rinceaux d'ornemens, avec sa garniture' was listed as having been in the Paris apartment of citoyen Médécin Cochu in the sale of his property on 3 ventôse An VII (1800).
Only three further pairs of this model without Triton riders on the horses are known: one pair is in the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna; another is in the collection of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Boughton House, Northamptonshire (T. Murdoch, Boughton House The English Versailles, London, 1992, pp. 122-123); and another pair struck with the C couronné poinçon (a tax mark used in France between March 1745 and February 1749 on any alloy containing copper) was formerly in the collection of Dr. Anton C.R. Dreesman, sold Christie's London, 10 April 2002, lot 250.
A further pair of chenets with the same form of base but lacking the seahorses (though possibly originally conceived for them, as there are flat sunken areas on the upper surfaces where the hooves would fit, though no holes for fixing them) is at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire (The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, vol. II, Furniture, pp. 726-7, no. 184). The Waddesdon chenets share the same overall form of asymmetric acanthus base with the Riahi chenets, as well as, interestingly, the same pounced chasing in some areas - a decorative motif more commonly associated with gilt-gesso decoration on English furniture of the early 18th century.
D.D. STRATHATOS
Demetrios Denys Strathatos was a Greek steam ship owner based in Ithaca and Cephalonia. The family shipping company was established by Othon Stathatos in 1883. Stathatos bought the Villa Rêve d'Or in Cannes in 1928 from the Swiss industrialist Paul Girod, who had owned it since 1917. Girod had rented the house for a short time in 1922 to Winston Churchill. Stathatos enlarged the garden and built one of the first swimming pools in Cannes, which remains as the oldest surviving example today, and though the villa no longer exists the garden is protected as a national monument and known as the jardin d'agrément de la Villa Rêve d'Or.