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拍品專文
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY HISTORY OF THE TORCHERES
The only other pair of torchères known of this model was sold at Christie's from the collection of H. Bingham Mildmay, Esq., 23 June 1893, lot 131 (483 gns/£509-5s to A.W., presumably Asher Wertheimer) and passed into a distinguished early twentieth Century French collection. They are now in a private collection.
The two pairs (the Mildmay pair in première partie, the Pembroke/Normanton pair in contre partie) can be clearly identified in the celebrated sale of Pierre-Louis Randon de Boisset on 27 February-25 March 1777.
***********************INSERT CATALOGUE ENTRY****************
At that sale they were acquired by the comte de Vaudreuil, another noted connoisseur of Louis XIV Boulle furniture and they reappear in this sale.
*****************INSERT CATALOGUE ENTRY*********************************
ANDRE-CHARLES BOULLE (1642-1732)
These remarkable torchères combine elements from two designs by André-Charles Boulle included in Nouveaux Deisseins de Meubles et Ouvrages de Bronze et de Marqueterie Inventés et gravés par André-Charles Boulle, chez Mariette, pl. 4, published in 1723. Described in Boulle's engraving as Guéridons or torchères pour une galerie such guéridons were conceived as meubles d'apparat for a gallery to support rock crystal candelabra. With their elegant balance of delicacy and sumptiousness the Randon de Boisset guéridons represent the apotheosis of a type of furniture that was to become increasingly rare as the 18th Century progressed.
The déclaration somptuaire of Boulle's workshop carried out in 1700 lists 'cinque escabelons de marqueterie avec ornements de cuivre doré. The 1715 acte de delaisement between Boulle and his sons lists six gueridons de marquetterie imparfaits (incomplete) 600 L'. The 1732 inventory compiled after Boulle's death lists 'no59 Une boeste d'anciens ornements pour des scabellons'. (J.P. Samoyault, André-Charles Boulle et sa Famille, Geneva, 1979, pp.68 and 143). The Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV, owned neuf autres scabellons de marqueterie aussy enrichis d'ornements de cuivre doré sur quatre pieds de haut (1.32 m). The tripod bases and vase stems mounted with têtes de belier are unique in Boulle's oeuvre but the baluster shafts mounted with fleurs-de-lys surmounted by sunflowers, suggestive of a Royal provenance, appear on a series of guéridons by Boulle which have a different base with fringed lambrequins dividing the scrolled feet. A pair of this model is in the Wallace Collection (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture 1, London 1996, p. 616, No.132 (F.417 and 418) and there are two pairs (in première and contre-partie from the Grog-Carven collection in the Louvre (D.Alcouffe, A. Dion-Tenenbaum and A. Lefebure, Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Dijon, 1993, 1, no.23, p.90). Another pair belonging to Sir Francis Dashwood, Bt., West Wycombe Park was sold at Christie's London, 20 June 1985, lot 72 and again at Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, lot 58. A related pair of torchères, which was interestingly also in the Randon de Boisset sale (lot 796) is in the J. Paul Getty museum, Los Angeles (illustrated in C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts, An Ilustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, pp. 72-3. cat. 106).R
William Beckford owned at least one pair of this model which appear in Rutter's Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey, 1823 (C. Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, London, 1989, figs. 107 and 120). The presence of Levasseur's stamp is intriguing. The top of the Mildmay torchères have the more usual ormolu border of overlapping laurel foliage, found for example on the Louvre guéridons. The moulded borders of the Normanton pair appears to have been replaced in the late eighteenth century. The bronze borders have been examined by a bronzier and they are of late eighteenth century manufacture, whilst the distinctive projecting Indian masks apper to be early eighteenth century Boulle mounts, conceived for a different use, and reused in the late eighteenth century. The chasing and finish is slightly different to the remainder of the torchère mounts, indicating a different hand. In both the Randon de Boisset and Vaudreuil sales, the torchères were described with the laurel foliage borders, so the alteration was almost certainly made after the Vaudreuil sale when the two pairs were split - and the charge was most probably made by Levasseur (whose stamp does not appear on the Mildmay pair). Levasseur had trained in the workshop of A.-C. Boulle the Younger and would have had access to Boulle mounts. The mask mounts are in fact very similar to some on one of the torchères in Mariette's engraving.
PIERRE-LOUIS RANDON DE BOISSET
Pierre-Louis Randon de Boisset was the archetypal 18th Century
collector and was considered the most famous amongst them. Stemming
from a family of notable bankers, he was initially a lawyer at the
parlement in Paris before he entered what was known at the time as Les affaires du Roi'. This lead him to a position as Fermier
Général in 1757. The Ferme Générale imposed taxes of
which a fixed sum was paid to the King. This sum was fixed for three, four or five years. The group of bankers who formed the Ferme
Générale were amongst the richest private individuals of the
Kingdom.
As of 1758, Randon de Boisset retired from his position in favour of being in charge of tax collections. As LeBrun stated, 'moins coercitive que la première lui donnait plus de temps pour se livrer à son gout pour les belles lettres et les beaux-Arts'. Hence in 1762/63 he dedicated 15 months to travelling in Italy.
Being an amateur in painting himself, he discovered Holland in 1766 together with his friend François Boucher. He achieved a collaboration between Boucher and Hubert Robert for the execution of six large compositions which were to go into the dining room of his hôtel. His collection of paintings embraced twenty-three works of Italian and Spanish Schools, one hundred and forty of Dutch and Flemish Schools and seventy-four of the French School. Nineteen of these paintings are currently at the Louvre: amongst others these are The Virgin in the Chapel by Murillo, the portrait of Helen Fourment and the Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, The Pilgrims to Emmaus and the Two Philosophers by Rembrandt. He was equally passionate about furniture, porcelain and books and he felt their aesthetic quality was equal to that of painting. In a world where opulence and splendour were the rule amongst bankers, the quality and the magnificence of his collections amazed his contemporaries.
Randon de Boisset never married and after his death in 1776 all his belongings were dispersed. The nine hundred and four lots in the painting and objects of art catalogue raised the staggering amount of 1,320,149 livres. Fifty-four pieces came from the workshop of André-Charles Boulle. All the great amateurs fought for his treasures, either directly or through intermediaries. Amongst those who acquired, were Catherine II of Russia, King Louis XVI, his brother the comte d'Artois, the ducs de Liancourt, Chaulnes, d'Aumont, de Rohan-Chabot, the duchesse de Mazarin, the Prince of Monaco, the comte de Vaudreuil, the vicomte de Choiseul-Praslin, M. Radix de Saint Foy, the painter Machy, and the actress Sophie Arnould. Numerous objects achieved extraordinary prices which would not be surpassed until the Revolution and it became a tradition until the end of the 18th Century that when one of the pieces from the collection came up for sale again the provenance and the price were indicated in the catalogue.
THE 12TH EARL OF PEMBROKE
The collection assembled by Lord Pembroke was a fascinating one and much celebrated in its time. Many pieces from the Carlton House Terrace sale were purchased by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and are now in the Wallace Collection. Peter Hughes describes him in the Wallace Collection catalogue as 'a reclusive expatriate with a Parisian residence in the place Vendôme, he seems to have been in several respects a precursor of Lord Hertford and was a significant source of French furniture now in the Wallace Collection, (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture I, London 1996, p.30). After Lord Pembroke's death the contents of 19 place Vendôme, where he had lived since 1853, were sold in Paris in 1862 at Hotel Drouot and Lord Hertford was again an enthusiastic buyer. (op cit., pp. 37-38). In 1816 Lord Normanton had married Lord Pembroke's sister, Lady Diana Herbert, d. 1841.
THE 2ND EARL OF NORMANTON'S COLLECTION AT SOMERLEY
At the sale of the London house of the 12th Earl of Pembroke (1791-1862), Carlton House Terrace, they were purchased by Welbore Ellis, 2nd Earl of Normanton (1778-1868), Lord Pembroke's brother-in-law. Lord Normanton created the remarkable Picture Gallery at Somerley around 1850 and the extraordinary collection of old masters, French furniture and objects of art he had assembled are recorded by James Digman Wingfield and Joseph Rubens Powell in their atmospheric views of 1853 showing the Picture Gallery at Somerley (J. Cornforth, English Interior 1790-1848, The Quest for Comfort, London 1978, p. 84, figs. 94 and 95). The views show the diversity of Lord Normanton's taste and the great treasures he assembled, including the Madonna and Child by Parmigianino, now in the National Gallery, Titian's Venus and Adonis, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, the famous table, with a petrified wood top from Marie-Antoinette's Méridienne at Versailles and the pietra dura casket-on-stand containing a Berlin porcelain cabaret from George Watson Taylor's sale at Erlestoke in 1832. Waagen writing after his visit in 1854 commented on the good proportions, the rich tasteful quality of the decorations and the excellence of the furniture (Waagen, supplement vol., p. 363 ff, Palaces of Art, Art Galleries in Britain 1790-1990, Dulwich Picture Gallery, November 1991-March 1992, no. E.4.)
In 1828 Lord Normanton had purchased the beautiful estate of Somerley, situated in the west of Hampshire, between the New Forest and the Dorset border. The house had been built in 1792-95 to designs by Samuel Wyatt for Daniel Hobson, a Manchester manufacturer and in 1811 the estate was acquired by Henry Baring who sold it in 1828. The great Picture Gallery added in 1850-51 was almost certainly designed by Lord Normanton himself.
Christopher Hussey writing on Somerley in Country Life in 1958 paints a brilliant picutre of Lord Normanton, 'he was among the keenest of the aristocratic group of collectors who in the late Georgian period assembled in this country so much of the artistic wealth which has not been transformed to America, and who protracted far into the 19th century the tastes and values of the 18th century.' (C Hussey, 'Somerley, Hampshire 1', Country Life, 16 January 1958, p. 110)
The only other pair of torchères known of this model was sold at Christie's from the collection of H. Bingham Mildmay, Esq., 23 June 1893, lot 131 (483 gns/£509-5s to A.W., presumably Asher Wertheimer) and passed into a distinguished early twentieth Century French collection. They are now in a private collection.
The two pairs (the Mildmay pair in première partie, the Pembroke/Normanton pair in contre partie) can be clearly identified in the celebrated sale of Pierre-Louis Randon de Boisset on 27 February-25 March 1777.
***********************INSERT CATALOGUE ENTRY****************
At that sale they were acquired by the comte de Vaudreuil, another noted connoisseur of Louis XIV Boulle furniture and they reappear in this sale.
*****************INSERT CATALOGUE ENTRY*********************************
ANDRE-CHARLES BOULLE (1642-1732)
These remarkable torchères combine elements from two designs by André-Charles Boulle included in Nouveaux Deisseins de Meubles et Ouvrages de Bronze et de Marqueterie Inventés et gravés par André-Charles Boulle, chez Mariette, pl. 4, published in 1723. Described in Boulle's engraving as Guéridons or torchères pour une galerie such guéridons were conceived as meubles d'apparat for a gallery to support rock crystal candelabra. With their elegant balance of delicacy and sumptiousness the Randon de Boisset guéridons represent the apotheosis of a type of furniture that was to become increasingly rare as the 18th Century progressed.
The déclaration somptuaire of Boulle's workshop carried out in 1700 lists 'cinque escabelons de marqueterie avec ornements de cuivre doré. The 1715 acte de delaisement between Boulle and his sons lists six gueridons de marquetterie imparfaits (incomplete) 600 L'. The 1732 inventory compiled after Boulle's death lists 'no59 Une boeste d'anciens ornements pour des scabellons'. (J.P. Samoyault, André-Charles Boulle et sa Famille, Geneva, 1979, pp.68 and 143). The Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV, owned neuf autres scabellons de marqueterie aussy enrichis d'ornements de cuivre doré sur quatre pieds de haut (1.32 m). The tripod bases and vase stems mounted with têtes de belier are unique in Boulle's oeuvre but the baluster shafts mounted with fleurs-de-lys surmounted by sunflowers, suggestive of a Royal provenance, appear on a series of guéridons by Boulle which have a different base with fringed lambrequins dividing the scrolled feet. A pair of this model is in the Wallace Collection (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture 1, London 1996, p. 616, No.132 (F.417 and 418) and there are two pairs (in première and contre-partie from the Grog-Carven collection in the Louvre (D.Alcouffe, A. Dion-Tenenbaum and A. Lefebure, Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Dijon, 1993, 1, no.23, p.90). Another pair belonging to Sir Francis Dashwood, Bt., West Wycombe Park was sold at Christie's London, 20 June 1985, lot 72 and again at Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, lot 58. A related pair of torchères, which was interestingly also in the Randon de Boisset sale (lot 796) is in the J. Paul Getty museum, Los Angeles (illustrated in C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts, An Ilustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, pp. 72-3. cat. 106).R
William Beckford owned at least one pair of this model which appear in Rutter's Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey, 1823 (C. Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, London, 1989, figs. 107 and 120). The presence of Levasseur's stamp is intriguing. The top of the Mildmay torchères have the more usual ormolu border of overlapping laurel foliage, found for example on the Louvre guéridons. The moulded borders of the Normanton pair appears to have been replaced in the late eighteenth century. The bronze borders have been examined by a bronzier and they are of late eighteenth century manufacture, whilst the distinctive projecting Indian masks apper to be early eighteenth century Boulle mounts, conceived for a different use, and reused in the late eighteenth century. The chasing and finish is slightly different to the remainder of the torchère mounts, indicating a different hand. In both the Randon de Boisset and Vaudreuil sales, the torchères were described with the laurel foliage borders, so the alteration was almost certainly made after the Vaudreuil sale when the two pairs were split - and the charge was most probably made by Levasseur (whose stamp does not appear on the Mildmay pair). Levasseur had trained in the workshop of A.-C. Boulle the Younger and would have had access to Boulle mounts. The mask mounts are in fact very similar to some on one of the torchères in Mariette's engraving.
PIERRE-LOUIS RANDON DE BOISSET
Pierre-Louis Randon de Boisset was the archetypal 18th Century
collector and was considered the most famous amongst them. Stemming
from a family of notable bankers, he was initially a lawyer at the
parlement in Paris before he entered what was known at the time as Les affaires du Roi'. This lead him to a position as Fermier
Général in 1757. The Ferme Générale imposed taxes of
which a fixed sum was paid to the King. This sum was fixed for three, four or five years. The group of bankers who formed the Ferme
Générale were amongst the richest private individuals of the
Kingdom.
As of 1758, Randon de Boisset retired from his position in favour of being in charge of tax collections. As LeBrun stated, 'moins coercitive que la première lui donnait plus de temps pour se livrer à son gout pour les belles lettres et les beaux-Arts'. Hence in 1762/63 he dedicated 15 months to travelling in Italy.
Being an amateur in painting himself, he discovered Holland in 1766 together with his friend François Boucher. He achieved a collaboration between Boucher and Hubert Robert for the execution of six large compositions which were to go into the dining room of his hôtel. His collection of paintings embraced twenty-three works of Italian and Spanish Schools, one hundred and forty of Dutch and Flemish Schools and seventy-four of the French School. Nineteen of these paintings are currently at the Louvre: amongst others these are The Virgin in the Chapel by Murillo, the portrait of Helen Fourment and the Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, The Pilgrims to Emmaus and the Two Philosophers by Rembrandt. He was equally passionate about furniture, porcelain and books and he felt their aesthetic quality was equal to that of painting. In a world where opulence and splendour were the rule amongst bankers, the quality and the magnificence of his collections amazed his contemporaries.
Randon de Boisset never married and after his death in 1776 all his belongings were dispersed. The nine hundred and four lots in the painting and objects of art catalogue raised the staggering amount of 1,320,149 livres. Fifty-four pieces came from the workshop of André-Charles Boulle. All the great amateurs fought for his treasures, either directly or through intermediaries. Amongst those who acquired, were Catherine II of Russia, King Louis XVI, his brother the comte d'Artois, the ducs de Liancourt, Chaulnes, d'Aumont, de Rohan-Chabot, the duchesse de Mazarin, the Prince of Monaco, the comte de Vaudreuil, the vicomte de Choiseul-Praslin, M. Radix de Saint Foy, the painter Machy, and the actress Sophie Arnould. Numerous objects achieved extraordinary prices which would not be surpassed until the Revolution and it became a tradition until the end of the 18th Century that when one of the pieces from the collection came up for sale again the provenance and the price were indicated in the catalogue.
THE 12TH EARL OF PEMBROKE
The collection assembled by Lord Pembroke was a fascinating one and much celebrated in its time. Many pieces from the Carlton House Terrace sale were purchased by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and are now in the Wallace Collection. Peter Hughes describes him in the Wallace Collection catalogue as 'a reclusive expatriate with a Parisian residence in the place Vendôme, he seems to have been in several respects a precursor of Lord Hertford and was a significant source of French furniture now in the Wallace Collection, (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture I, London 1996, p.30). After Lord Pembroke's death the contents of 19 place Vendôme, where he had lived since 1853, were sold in Paris in 1862 at Hotel Drouot and Lord Hertford was again an enthusiastic buyer. (op cit., pp. 37-38). In 1816 Lord Normanton had married Lord Pembroke's sister, Lady Diana Herbert, d. 1841.
THE 2ND EARL OF NORMANTON'S COLLECTION AT SOMERLEY
At the sale of the London house of the 12th Earl of Pembroke (1791-1862), Carlton House Terrace, they were purchased by Welbore Ellis, 2nd Earl of Normanton (1778-1868), Lord Pembroke's brother-in-law. Lord Normanton created the remarkable Picture Gallery at Somerley around 1850 and the extraordinary collection of old masters, French furniture and objects of art he had assembled are recorded by James Digman Wingfield and Joseph Rubens Powell in their atmospheric views of 1853 showing the Picture Gallery at Somerley (J. Cornforth, English Interior 1790-1848, The Quest for Comfort, London 1978, p. 84, figs. 94 and 95). The views show the diversity of Lord Normanton's taste and the great treasures he assembled, including the Madonna and Child by Parmigianino, now in the National Gallery, Titian's Venus and Adonis, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, the famous table, with a petrified wood top from Marie-Antoinette's Méridienne at Versailles and the pietra dura casket-on-stand containing a Berlin porcelain cabaret from George Watson Taylor's sale at Erlestoke in 1832. Waagen writing after his visit in 1854 commented on the good proportions, the rich tasteful quality of the decorations and the excellence of the furniture (Waagen, supplement vol., p. 363 ff, Palaces of Art, Art Galleries in Britain 1790-1990, Dulwich Picture Gallery, November 1991-March 1992, no. E.4.)
In 1828 Lord Normanton had purchased the beautiful estate of Somerley, situated in the west of Hampshire, between the New Forest and the Dorset border. The house had been built in 1792-95 to designs by Samuel Wyatt for Daniel Hobson, a Manchester manufacturer and in 1811 the estate was acquired by Henry Baring who sold it in 1828. The great Picture Gallery added in 1850-51 was almost certainly designed by Lord Normanton himself.
Christopher Hussey writing on Somerley in Country Life in 1958 paints a brilliant picutre of Lord Normanton, 'he was among the keenest of the aristocratic group of collectors who in the late Georgian period assembled in this country so much of the artistic wealth which has not been transformed to America, and who protracted far into the 19th century the tastes and values of the 18th century.' (C Hussey, 'Somerley, Hampshire 1', Country Life, 16 January 1958, p. 110)