CIRCA 1760-70, DERIVED FROM A DESIGN BY SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS

These griffin chenets relate to a design attributed to Sir William Chambers (1726-1796), architect to George III; the design was published in the third edition of his Treatise on the Decorative Parts of Civil Architecture of 1791 (p. 240) where it was drawn by Chamber's pupil and assistant John Yenn (1750-1821). Yenn enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts in 1769, (one of only four architects to be elected to the Academy during Chamber's time on the council) and subsequently won the Royal Academy School Gold medal in 1771. In the late 1770s Yenn succeeded Chambers as the 4th Duke of Marlborough's architect at Blenheim Palace. Chambers describes his designs as including 'ornamental utensils, designed for the Earl of Charlemont, for Lord Melbourne, and for some decorations for my own house'. A closely related pair of ormolu griffin candlesticks, circa 1767, to the Chambers design and attributed to Diederich Nicolaus Anderson (d.1767)' are part of the collection of the 4th Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace (J. Harris & M. Snodin, Sir William Chambers, Architect to George III, London 1996, p. 160, fig. 239). Although incomplete documentary evidence of Anderson's work survives, he appears to have been both James 'Athenian' Stuart and Sir William Chambers' preferred metal-worker; Chambers's personal correspondence reveals that Anderson's workshop was responsible for producing many of the high quality ormolu ornaments that Chambers' commissions required. These chenets, as well as much of Chambers's decorative vocabulary, represent a strong Franco-Italian influence. The use of the griffin, the sacred mythical figure which was said to have pulled Apollo's chariot, was wholly appropriate to the prevailing neoclassical taste and it is probable that Chambers adapted the idea from a seated sphinx with strong outlines that he had seen on an antique Roman sarcophogus while on his Roman Tour between 1750 and 1754. A pair of griffin borne candlesticks of the same design as the Blenheim examples were sold, Christie's, New York, 19 April 2001, lot 250 ($116,000 incl.).