112
A PAIR OF GRAND TOUR BRONZE THREE-LIGHT TORCHERE GASOLIERS, circa 1835, either Neapolitan or English
Currency:EUR
Category:Everything Else / Other
Start Price:NA
NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00EUR+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Nov 25 @ 10:30UTC+00:00 : GMT
A PAIR OF GRAND TOUR BRONZE THREE-LIGHT TORCHERE GASOLIERS, circa 1835, either Neapolitan or English, each with a reeded foliage clasp column below a gadrooned oil-lamp with Egyptian mask and laurel-swagged branches on triple chain-suspension, on scrolled lion monopodia and concave-sided base, the later brass gas fitments stamped 'Bray's Patent & Rd No 414133' with later opaque glass shades stamped 'Schott & Gen of Jena', the replaced holders stamped 'Keith's Patent Pilot', the oil-lamp designed to hang freely from linked suspension chains but apparently conceived to sit on top of the torchères in their present form, the gas taps to the base replaced (2)
231.25cms high (excluding shades).
e20,000/30,000
LITERATURE: E. McParland. 'Lissadell, Co. Sligo', Country Life, 6 October 1977, p.916.
J. O'Brien and D. Guinness, Great Irish Houses and Castles, London, 1992, p.201 (illustrated in situ).
H. Montgomery-Massingberd and C. Simon Sykes, Great Houses of Ireland, London, 1999, p.191 (illustrated in situ).
J.Gore-Booth, 'Lissadell', Irish Arts Review, Summer 2003, p.115 (illustrated in situ)
Designed in the 'Antique' style popularised by the collector/ connoisseur Thomas Hope in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807, pls. X and XXII, these Roman tripods support colza-oil lamps of Grecian design, whilst standing on chimerical-headed lion-paw feet. Patterns for related bronze candelabra with lion monopodia tripods were published in Henry Moses, A Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, Paterae, Tripods, Candelabra, Sarcophagi, London, 1814, plates 83-86, and this fashion was popularised in the early 19th Century by bronze-founders such as Benjamin Vulliamy (d.1821) and Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (d.1854), who earned
the epithet 'Furniture man' to George, Prince of Wales and later King George IV
(R. Smith, 'Vulliamy and the Kinnaird candelabra', Apollo, January 1997, pp.30-34).
Although a closely related pair of torcheres feature in Francis Goodwin's view of the Gallery at Lissadell, published as the frontispiece to his Domestic Architecture, 1833-34, they are of slightly different proportions and design, particularly to the base. It is therefore entirely possible that Sir Robert Gore-Booth may have sought out these torcheres on one of his Grand Tours to Italy, either in 1826 but more probably in 1836-7, following Goodwin's proposed designs for furnishing the Gallery. Interestingly, the distinctive patination and colouring of the torcheres is reminiscent of Neapolitan bronze foundries, such as Chiurazzi, who appear to have specialised in producing bronzes after recently excavated prototypes from Antiquity, dug up at nearby Herculaneum and Pompeii and subsequently placed in the recently founded Museum in Naples. Interestingly, Sir Robert's first wife Caroline was sketching around Naples in October 1826, and amongst the sketches included in lot 556 is that for a bronze tree hung with closely related oil-lamps, which was copied from an antique prototype in the Naples Museum.
A related set of four torchères, dating from circa 1795-1800 and probably executed by the bronzier Alexis Decaix after designs by Henry Holland and his assistant Charles Heathcote Tatham, was supplied to the 5th Duke of Bedford for the Library at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire. These were first engraved in Henry Moses' Vitruvius Britannicus of 1827 and may well have inspired further versions in the 1830's.
Interestingly, Thomas Messenger of Birmingham, manufacturers of 'Chandeliers, Tripods and Lamps of every Description in Bronze and Or-Molu' who opened a
London branch in the mid-1820s, featured a related stand on their 1830's trade-card (circa Gilbert and A. Wells-Cole, The Fashionable Fire Place, Temple Newsam, 1985, fig. 95).
The signature Schott & Gen on the later glass shades is that of a still extant glass company in Jeha, Germany.
A pair of related torcheres was sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 21 October 1999, lot 268 ($63,000).
Auction Location:
Ireland
Previewing Details:
Sunday 23rd and Monday 24th November 2003, 10.00am to 5.00pm
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C.
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