一对精美的路易十四风格鎏金铜质图腾烛台

描述

A Fine Pair of Louis XIV Style Gilt-Bronze Figural Candlesticks, with stems cast as female terms holding floral swags and pendants of flowers and fruit. The term figures are supported on circular bases with guilloche pattern borders enclosing rosettes.

This fine pair of candlesticks draw their inspiration from Etienne Le Hongre’s term figure of Pomona at Versailles which depicts the arms and the swags of fruit and flowers in a corresponding position. An almost identical pair of mid-nineteenth century candelabra are now preserved in the Wallace Collection, London (258, F22-3). The candlesticks in the Wallace Collection are first mentioned in the Hertford House inventories in 1890, and present in the Long Drawing room in 1898.

The Wallace examples have identical circular bases with guilloche decoration and term figures with floral swags and lace head-dresses; they differ only in the handling of the sconces. The present examples having a circular foliate disc below the candle nozzle and a gadronned scalloped collar to the nozzle. As with the candlesticks in the Wallace Collection, the present pair can be dated to the mid-nineteenth century by their construction and by the lathe-turning of the castings making up the platforms of the undersides of the bases.