19TH CENTURY

With their triple female caryatid shaft swagged with floral garlands, laurel collar and domed, acanthus-cast plinth, these candlesticks are based on a design attributed to Jean-Demosthène Dugourc (1749-1825) in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. This design is included in an album of designs for furniture subsequently delivered to both Madame Elizabeth and the comte de Provence, and inscribed Dessiné par J.D.Dugourc, architecte et dessinateur Du Cabinet de Monsieur Frère Du Roi. Paris. 1790. The album depicts both executed and projected designs, several of them in the genres Arabesque et Etrusque fashionable in the early 1780s. This related model is first recorded on 26 June 1783, when the ciseleur-doreur François Rémond invoiced the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre Pour fonte, facon et dorure mate d'une paire de grands flambeaux a 4. figures et a gurilandes et fleur, etc 1050 livres (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, F174-5, pp. 1249-50). It is, therefore, a strong possibility that this model of candlestick was also originally supplied through Daguerre.
A pair of Louis XVI candlesticks of this identical model is in Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden (illustrated in H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol I, pp. 186-7, 4.15.2)