CIRCA 1770-75

This pair of two-branch wall lights, with ram's masks , were conceived in the fashionable goût grec of the late 1760s and early 1770s, and bear a close resemblance to several models by various well-known bronziers. A similar pair of wall lights with three candle-branches in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, is illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, p. 212. Eriksen dates the model to circa 1770 on the basis of similar examples with the ram’s head supplied by the bronzier Quentin-Claude Pitoin (circa 1725-1777) to the Prince de Condé in 1771, which appear in his inventory in 1779. Philippe Caffiéri also had a model with a ram's head in his stock described in the inventory drawn up in December 1770. The influential architect and dessinateur Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734-1791) also conceived examples with such motif. Similar wall lights are illustrated in H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 186, 3.9, while a pair with a slightly different design to the urn-finial and nozzles was sold anonymously, Sotheby’s London, 8th July, 2008, lot 207.