PROPERTY OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND (LOTS 455-474)
A PAIR OF FRENCH ORMOLU FIVE-BRANCH WALL-LIGHTS

19TH CENTURY

Details
A PAIR OF FRENCH ORMOLU FIVE-BRANCH WALL-LIGHTS
19TH CENTURY
With mask and lyre-form backplate, five scrolling foliate candle arms, wired for electricity, the backs with black-painted French & Company inventory number '50379', lacking one foliate drip pan
37 in. (94 cm.) high (2)
Provenance
Possibly the Collection of Thomas P. Thorne, New York (one pair)
Possibly the Collection of the late Mrs. F. Gray Griswold, Parke Bernet, New York, 15 February 1941, lot 34 (one pair)
Mrs. I. Dee Kelley (the set of four)
with French and Company, New York, from whom they were purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

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Casey Rogers

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Lot Essay

These wall-lights, and the following lot, are after a group of well known wall-lights attributed to Pierre-François Feuchère of circa 1785. These, in turn, are similar to, and probably inspired by, the designs for a group of wall-lights sketched by Jean-Demosthène Dugourc, also of circa 1785, and now in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York (H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, p. 289). And although the San Fransisco wall-lights are cited in Ottomeyer and Pröschel, they were possibly only catalogued from photographs and never examined in person before their publication.

THE PROVENANCE
The French & Company inventory records list a set of four wall lights purchased from Mrs. I. Dee Kelley in 1949 with the additional provenance that one pair was purchased in the Parke Bernet sale of 1941.

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