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Lot Essay
These wall-lights are closely related to a pair delivered to the Cabinet Intérieur of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. A further pair of twin-branch wall-lights of this model, signed Thomire and dated 1787, conceivably the first of this series, was sold at Christie's Monaco, 5 December 1993, lot 18.
These elegant wall-lights, with classically draped caryatids lightly and seemingly impossibly holding delicately scrolling branches beneath a berried thyrsus entwined with a vine, are conceived in the goût étrusque that was prevalent during the last years of the reign of Louis XVI. Several features suggest the involvement of the celebrated ciseleur-doreur François Rémond (1747-1812): the eagles’ heads, the pearl-swagged nozzles and the thyrsus topped by a berried finial all appear on the pair of candelabra supported by winged female figures supplied by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre to the princesse Kinsky (1729-1794), almost certainly made by Rémond, who worked predominantly for Daguerre and who is known to have supplied several of the ormolu objects commissioned by the princesse for her new hôtel particulier on the rue Saint-Dominique (sold Christie’s, Paris, 30 November 2016, lot 21, €170,500). The palm leaf drip-pans of the outer branches and the beaded chains that originally would probably have hung from the rosettes just above the caryatid’s head down to the eagles’ beaks also feature on a pair of five-branch wall-lights with satyr and classical masks that can be attributed to Rémond and were almost certainly supplied to the duc d’Orléans circa 1785 for the château de Saint-Leu (sold Christie’s, New York, 20 April 2018, lot 15, $250,000).
This particular design is apparently rare, with only one other pair of four-branch wall-lights having been so far identified, sold anonymously by Mes Ader, Picard, Tajan, Palais Galliera, Paris, 29-30 November 1976, lot 194; those differed from the present pair with their addition of a tapering garlanded pedestal beneath the caryatid’s feet. A closely related pair, albeit with two branches rather than four and with additional foliate sprays to either side of the capital and to the boss, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts, no. 832 (H. Ottomeyer & P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, fig. 4.16.12); a nearly identical pair to the Detroit versions was recorded in the Demidoff Collection at San Donato, Florence, 1880, no. 1092; and a further twin-branch pair, though lacking the thyrsus, was formerly in the collections of Baron Eric von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Frankfurt (sold P. Graupe, Berlin, 24-25 March 1931, lot 363).
These elegant wall-lights, with classically draped caryatids lightly and seemingly impossibly holding delicately scrolling branches beneath a berried thyrsus entwined with a vine, are conceived in the goût étrusque that was prevalent during the last years of the reign of Louis XVI. Several features suggest the involvement of the celebrated ciseleur-doreur François Rémond (1747-1812): the eagles’ heads, the pearl-swagged nozzles and the thyrsus topped by a berried finial all appear on the pair of candelabra supported by winged female figures supplied by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre to the princesse Kinsky (1729-1794), almost certainly made by Rémond, who worked predominantly for Daguerre and who is known to have supplied several of the ormolu objects commissioned by the princesse for her new hôtel particulier on the rue Saint-Dominique (sold Christie’s, Paris, 30 November 2016, lot 21, €170,500). The palm leaf drip-pans of the outer branches and the beaded chains that originally would probably have hung from the rosettes just above the caryatid’s head down to the eagles’ beaks also feature on a pair of five-branch wall-lights with satyr and classical masks that can be attributed to Rémond and were almost certainly supplied to the duc d’Orléans circa 1785 for the château de Saint-Leu (sold Christie’s, New York, 20 April 2018, lot 15, $250,000).
This particular design is apparently rare, with only one other pair of four-branch wall-lights having been so far identified, sold anonymously by Mes Ader, Picard, Tajan, Palais Galliera, Paris, 29-30 November 1976, lot 194; those differed from the present pair with their addition of a tapering garlanded pedestal beneath the caryatid’s feet. A closely related pair, albeit with two branches rather than four and with additional foliate sprays to either side of the capital and to the boss, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts, no. 832 (H. Ottomeyer & P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, fig. 4.16.12); a nearly identical pair to the Detroit versions was recorded in the Demidoff Collection at San Donato, Florence, 1880, no. 1092; and a further twin-branch pair, though lacking the thyrsus, was formerly in the collections of Baron Eric von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Frankfurt (sold P. Graupe, Berlin, 24-25 March 1931, lot 363).