CIRCA 1740-50, POSSIBLY BY JACQUES CAFFIERI

These magnificent chenets epitomize the playful spirit of the Louis XV 'pittoresque' style of the late 1740s. Boldly sculptural, they are conceived in the form of various finely-chased scrolls, each with a dog to one side. With their distinctive waved scrolls and gadrooned motifs to the rockwork, they relate to various bronzes d’ameublement executed by sculpteur, fondeur et ciseleur du Roi Jacques Caffiéri (1678-1755), most notably the wall-lights and other items purchased by Madame Infante, Louise-Elizabeth of France, duchesse de Parma, for the Palazzo di Colorno and sent to Colorno in 1752-‘53 (C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts, An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, p. 103, no. 168). They are also closely related to a pair of chenets signed ‘Caffieri fecit’, which have similar scrolls and cast and moulded motifs. These are in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 112, fig.2.4.3.

Their design relates closely to a drawing by Lambert Sigisbert Adam for a chenet with Triton astride a sea horse (illustrated in P. Fuhring, Design Into Art, London 1981, vol. I, fig. 581). A pair of chenets based directly on this drawing, possibly supplied to the comte de Toulouse, was sold at Christie's, Monaco, 15 December 1996, lot 80.