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Lot Essay
Victor Amedeo III, King of Sardinia and Savoy (reigned 1773-1796) married Marie-Antoinette of Spain. Their son, the future Carlo Emmanuel IV (reigned 1796-1819) married Marie Clotilde Adelaide (died 1802) known as Madame Clotilde, a sister of Louis XVI. Possibly the encrier was ordered by Madame Clotilde as a gift for her husband or her father-in-law. 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. 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. "Tres bel encrier du temps de Louis XVI en bronze de la Maison de Savoie la 30 cm profondeur 22."
It was probably acquired at that sale by the Rothschild family and was noted by Sir Francis Watson in the collection of baronne Alphonse de Rothschild in New York.
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 and 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).
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). For that Royal commission, Prieur and Philippe Caffiéri seem to have enjoyed the lion's-share of the subsequent contracts, which lasted from 1766 into the early 1770's.
"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. "Tres bel encrier du temps de Louis XVI en bronze de la Maison de Savoie la 30 cm profondeur 22."
It was probably acquired at that sale by the Rothschild family and was noted by Sir Francis Watson in the collection of baronne Alphonse de Rothschild in New York.
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 and 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).
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). For that Royal commission, Prieur and Philippe Caffiéri seem to have enjoyed the lion's-share of the subsequent contracts, which lasted from 1766 into the early 1770's.