A Pair Of Louis XV Style Ormolu Three Branch Wall Lights

The very nat­u­ral­is­tic acan­thus branch­es and fruit­ing oak leaves issu­ing from a cen­tral scroll, shows the per­fect under­stand­ing of qual­i­ty and pro­por­tion and reflects accu­rate­ly the Louis XV ​‘pit­toresque’ style in its purest form. This elab­o­rate and ambi­tious type was exe­cut­ed by var­i­ous bronziers in the 1740s and 1750s.

Espe­cial­ly, this mod­el of wall sconces is char­ac­ter­is­tic for the fondeur of the Roi, Jean-Claude Dup­lessis (1695−1774).
Our fine elab­o­rat­ed mod­el with its won­der­ful gild­ing from the sec­ond half of the 19^th Cen­tu­ry, is very close to a pair we can find today in the Wrights­man Col­lec­tion of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, New York, (F.J.B. Wat­son, The Wrights­man Col­lec­tion of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, p. 415, figs 228 A and B). These wall lights can be dat­ed exact­ly between March 1745 and Feb­ru­ary 1749.

There are exist­ing also very sim­i­lar wall lights, exe­cut­ed and signed by Jacques Caf­fiéri (1678−1755), sculp­teur, cise­leur et fondeur of the King. For instance, he made a set of four wall-lights for Madame Louise-Elis­a­beth, Madame Infante, Duchesse de Parme, for the Palace of Col­orno, near Par­ma, which she bought from him in Paris ¹⁷⁵²⁄₅₃. This set, togeth­er with a Chan­de­lier, is now in the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion (P. Hugh­es, The Wal­lace Col­lec­tion, cat­a­logue of fur­ni­ture, vol. III, Lon­don, 1996, fig. 265 and 266).
Fur­ther­more, we can find sim­i­lar exam­ples in Château Fontainebleau (since 1804; P. Samoy­ault, Fontainebleau, Pen­d­ules et Bronzes entrés sous le Pre­mier Empire, Paris, 1989, p. 123, fig. 88).

This pair of wall lights, we present here, is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the ele­gance and per­fect bal­ance of the design in the 18^th Cen­tu­ry, exe­cut­ed of extra­or­di­nary qual­i­ty in the 19^th Century.

Restored with the utmost care in our inhouse-work­shops, and new­ly fit­ted for electricity.