Object Description
A Large and Impressive Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Four-Light Candelabrum, After the Model Attributed to Pierre Gouthière.
Finely cast and gilded with a central stem issuing three acanthus-wrapped scrolled branches, with leaf-cast drip-pans and nozzles, supported on triple rams’ monopodiae, hung with ’embroidered’ tasselled penants and floral swags and enclosing a triple-handled amphora with central band cast with playful putti, on a triform base enclosing floral-garlanded Apollo masks, raised on a triform plinth cast with a fine guilloche border.
This fine candelabrum is modelled after the famous pair of candelabra attributed to Pierre Gouthière now conserved in the Petit-Trianon at Versailles. According to Pierre Verlet, the model corresponds to a large pair of candelabra with ten branches, drapery, foliage, and fruit, richly carved and gilded in bronze, originally supplied by the marchand mercier, Freres Darnault for Marie-Antoinette’s Salon du Jeu at the Petit-Trianon in 1785 (see P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 99, fig. 111)
A popular model in the second half of the 19th century examples were made by some of the finest ‘bronziers’ of the day such as Alfred Beurdeley.
French, Circa 1890.