Lot Essay
These extremely grand -- and impressively sized -- torcheres relate very closely to a design by Jacques-François Blondel (1705-1774), a leading ornementaliste and designer at the court of Louis XV and the nephew of the architect François Blondel (1683-1756). The design for 'torchères pour la décoration des appartements' appears as plate 94 in the second volume of his 1737-8 treatise De la Distribution des maisons de plaisance. And the right-hand design of this plate was clearly the inspiration for the original torchere of the present pair.