ATTRIBUTED TO PIERRE GOUTHIERE, CIRCA 1775

Of superlative quality and proudly displaying the royal arms of the House of Savoy, this encrier relates to the work of the famed ciseleur-doreur du roy Pierre Gouthière and was probably part of a royal commission celebrating the ties both marital and political between the houses of Bourbon and Savoy.

THE PROVENANCE

The years 1771 and 1775 saw three dynastic marriages between the royal siblings of France and Savoy. The comte de Provence had married Marie Joséphine of Savoy in 1771 followed by his brother the comte d'Artois' marriage to her sister Marie Thérèse of Savoy and in 1775 the marriage of the comtes' sister Clotilde to the Savoyard princesses' brother and heir to the Kingdom of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel, (later King of Sardinia from 1796). Given the French royal family's patronage of Gouthiere and the Savoy coat of arms on the present lot, it is likely that the encrier was either part of Clotilde's dowry or was intended as a gift for her husband or her father-in-law King Victor Amedeo III of Sardinia and Savoy (reigned 1773-1796). It is not known when the encrier left the Italian Royal collections but it was recorded before 1864 in the Prince de Beauvau's collection.
Prince Charles Juste de Beauvau (1793-1863) formed an important collection of furniture and objects d'art between 1820 and 1860, including a table by Weisweiler delivered by Daguerre in 1784 for Marie Antoinette at Saint Cloud now in the Louvre (OA 5509). He also owned a commode which had belonged to the Queen, now in the Wallace Collection (F247) and a jasper cassolette that she had acquired at the duc d'Aumont's sale, also in the Wallace Collection (F292).
The encrier was probably acquired at the Beauvau sale by the Rothschild family and was noted by Sir Francis Watson in the collection of baronne Alphonse de Rothschild in New York.

THE ATTRIBUTION

The encrier has long been attributed to Gouthière, as described in the inventory drawn up after the death of prince Charles Juste de Beauvau in 1864 as "no. 99 ecritoire en bronze dore (par Gouthiere) 4000 francs." Less than a year later it was sold at Drouot on 21 April 1865, lot 22 for 5800 francs and described as a "Tres bel encrier du temps de Louis XVI en bronze de la Maison de Savoie la 30 cm profondeur 22."
Gouthière's name was almost unique among ciseleur-fondeurs in that it appeared as early as the 18th century in sale catalogues and inventories. As well as the two-tone gilding on the encrier, a technique perfected by Gouthière, and the characteristic jewel-like chasing of the mounts unparalleled by other makers of the period, the eagles forming the feet relate to other works by Gouthière, in particular a pair of chenets commissioned by the Duchesse de Mazarin which are modelled as eagles, larger than those in the present example, but of the same model and form, cast with exquisite delicacy and displaying the same fine chasing (illustrated C. Vignon et C. Baulez, Pierre Gouthière, The Frick Collection, New York, 2016, pp. 238-241).
A closely related encrier, undoubtedly executed in the same workshop and formerly in the Wrightsman Collection, was sold anonymously at Christie's New York, 30 October 1993, lot 272 ($85,000). Formerly in the collection of the marquis de Galard, it differed in the design of the back, the central flaming urn flanked by fluted column wells on this example instead replaced by lions-mask cassolette vases flanking a central bell; also, the armorial panel remained blank and it was not placed on a lozenge-etched plinth.

A number of the neoclassical motifs, notably the eagle supports and the flaming-urns, first appear in the designs of the architect Victor Louis and the maître-sculpteur Jean-Louis Prieur for Stanislas-Augustus, King of Poland in 1765-1766 (see S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, 1974, pp. 352, 390-391, pl. 205, 209).