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Lot Essay
The design for this cooler is attributed to French-born Jean-Jacques Boileau, a mural painter, who came to England to assist architect Henry Holland in the decoration of the Prince of Wales's Carlton House. Boileau's drawing for a wine cooler in the Egyptian manner, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is clearly the inspiration for this object, which features identical sphinx supports and similar serpent handles. The cooler's upper section corresponds to that of a set of silver-gilt wine-coolers by Paul Storr in the collection of the Dukes of Bedford at Woburn Abbey which bear the London hallmark for 1803/4 (see M. Snodin, 'J. J. Boileau: A Forgotten Designer of Silver', The Connoisseur, June 1978, pp. 124-33 and H. Young, 'A Further Note on J. J. Boileau, "A Forgotten Designer of Silver"', Apollo, October 1986, pp. 334-37). A pair of identical ormolu wine coolers (retaining their original liners and with swan mount upside down) appeared in the sale of the 1st Viscount Bridport, great uncle to Admiral Viscount Nelson, Christie's London, 12 July 1895, lot 113. The catalogue entry is unclear as to whether these coolers originally belonged to Admiral Nelson but their date and style would suggest this possibility. The pair was later sold by the Trustees of The late H.T.S. Upcher, Christie's House sale, Sheringham Hall, Upper Sheringham, Norfolk, 22-23 October 1986, lot 106 (£37,400). A related pair of silver-gilt fruit coolers, bearing the maker's mark of Digby Scott and Benjamin Smith II and retailed by Rundell Bridge and Rundell from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection sold in these Rooms, 20 October 1999, lot 184 ($310,500).
The design of the winged sphinxes is derived from a portfolio of drawings by Jean-Jacques Boileau who was associated with Rundell Bridge and Rundell around 1803, and from which many of the firm's designs were based (T.B.Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1988, pp.337-341, no.89-90). Examples of ormolu objects made by the firm includes a Regency centerpiece, also with winged sphinx supports, sold Christie's New York, 12 October 1996, lot 128. A set of six Regency ormolu candelabra with neo-Egyptian figures and sphinx supports by Rundell Bridge and Rundell further supports the attribution to this firm. The candelabra are currently in a New York private collection.
Boileau's design for this wine cooler reflects the 'French Empire' style promoted by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign and later popularized by publications such as Vivant Denon's Voyages dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte of 1802 and its English translation Travels in Egypt, 1803. This ornamental style was lead by the Rome-trained French court architects C. Percier and P.F.L. Fontaine, whose Receuil de Decorations Interieures, 1801, featured guardian sphinx supports on one of their Roman-style festive altars (pl.V) and on a tripod candleabrum (pl. XXIII). In London, this Parisian style was advanced around 1800 by the furnishings of Thomas Hope's mansion/museum in Duchess Street, where this same tripod-pattern of addorsed and single-legged sphinx featured on bronze 'candleabrum' candlesticks, which he is likely to have commissioned from the French-born Piccadilly bronze-founder Alexis Decaix (d.1811) (T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl.XLIX). The present sphinx rest on tripod and hollow-sided 'altar' plinths, whose paw feet evoke the lion-attendants at Bacchus's triumphal Feasts.
The design of the winged sphinxes is derived from a portfolio of drawings by Jean-Jacques Boileau who was associated with Rundell Bridge and Rundell around 1803, and from which many of the firm's designs were based (T.B.Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1988, pp.337-341, no.89-90). Examples of ormolu objects made by the firm includes a Regency centerpiece, also with winged sphinx supports, sold Christie's New York, 12 October 1996, lot 128. A set of six Regency ormolu candelabra with neo-Egyptian figures and sphinx supports by Rundell Bridge and Rundell further supports the attribution to this firm. The candelabra are currently in a New York private collection.
Boileau's design for this wine cooler reflects the 'French Empire' style promoted by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign and later popularized by publications such as Vivant Denon's Voyages dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte of 1802 and its English translation Travels in Egypt, 1803. This ornamental style was lead by the Rome-trained French court architects C. Percier and P.F.L. Fontaine, whose Receuil de Decorations Interieures, 1801, featured guardian sphinx supports on one of their Roman-style festive altars (pl.V) and on a tripod candleabrum (pl. XXIII). In London, this Parisian style was advanced around 1800 by the furnishings of Thomas Hope's mansion/museum in Duchess Street, where this same tripod-pattern of addorsed and single-legged sphinx featured on bronze 'candleabrum' candlesticks, which he is likely to have commissioned from the French-born Piccadilly bronze-founder Alexis Decaix (d.1811) (T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl.XLIX). The present sphinx rest on tripod and hollow-sided 'altar' plinths, whose paw feet evoke the lion-attendants at Bacchus's triumphal Feasts.