This ormolu-enriched bronze mantel-piece garniture, designed in the Louis XVI 'Etruscaÿ' or 'Pompeian' manner of the 1780's, features a lightly clad youth and his companion studying by the light of Roman lamps, which also serve as their couches. The plinth-supported oil-lamps with gadrooned bowls have flame-wrapped nozzles, and while the youthful Philosopher writes on a tablet his female companion studies a book. A related scroll-handled lamp surmounted by a female figure, perhaps emblematic of History, features as the garniture of a mantelpiece in a drawing in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (see J. Bourne and V. Brett, Lighting in the Domestic Interior, 1991, fig. 530).
Models for Le Philosophe, La Lectrice and L'Etude in porcelain were first executed for a Lampe antique in 1780 by Louis-Simon Boizot (d. 1809), who was Sculpteur du Roi. He succeeded Etienne Falconet as Director of Sculpture at the Royal Sèvres Manufactory in 1773 and later worked in conjunction with the celebrated bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire (maître in 1772) (see E. Bourgeois, Le Biscuit de Sèvres, Paris, 1909, vol. II, p. 22). They also featured on a clock-model, known as L'Etude et la Philosophie for which the bronzier François Rémond (maître in 1774) produced a design commissioned by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre (see C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, London, 1983, p. 155). Other examples of this model have been sold in these Rooms, 25 May 1993, lot 47, 1 November 1989, lot 39 and Christie's London, 9 June 1994, lot 65.