Lot 1
  • 1

A pair of Louis XV ormolu-mounted Meissen porcelain and tôle peinte three-light candelabra circa 1750, Modelled by J.J. Kändler and P. Reinicke

bidding is closed

Description

  • height 15 1/4 in.; width 12 1/2in.
  • 38.7cm; 31.8cm.
depicting a Bulgarian lady in pink hat and bodice with flower-sprig decorated skirt; and a Hungarian in fur-lined yellow cloak over a pink uniform and yellow boots; each standing on a pierced scrolled leaf-cast  ormolu base in front of leafy green tôle peinte branches fitted with a variety of porcelain flowerheads and with ormolu leafy drip pans and nozzles.  Regilt.

Provenance

Mrs. Stotesbury (name found on a label beneath one of the figures)

Collection of Anna Thomson Dodge, Rose Terrace, sold, Christie's, London, June 24, 1971, lot 26 (1200 gns)

Partridge Fine Arts, London

Catalogue Note

The Mrs. Stotesbury referred to above is most probably Eva Stotesbury (1865-1956), the well-known Palm Beach and Philadelphia hostess and wife of Edward Stotesbury, chief executive of the Philadelphia banking firm of Drexel & Co., and co-partner of J.P. Morgan & Co.  Her son, James H.R. Cromwell married Mrs. Dodge's daughter Delphine in 1920.  Mrs. Dodge and Mrs. Stotesbury were close friends, the latter responsible for introducing Mrs. Dodge to Lord Duveen, her favorite dealer, and to Horace Trumbauer, the architect of Rose Terrace.  Trumbauer, who also designed the Stotesbury's Philadelphia house, Whitemarsh Hall in the American French style, "understood, as did few other architects of his generation, that only a magnificent setting could hope to satisfy an American with a magnificent income" (W. Andrews).  See T. Dell, et al., The Dodge Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, New York, 1996.

Anna Thompson Dodge

Anna Thompson Dodge was married to Horace Dodge, co-founder of the motor-car company.  In the 1930's Mrs. Dodge, then widowed, commissioned the building of a French château on her lakeside property at Rose Terrace in the fashionable suburb of Grosse Pointe outside Detroit.  Horace Trumbauer was the architect for this imposing residence which took four years to build; it was completed in 1936.  Mrs. Dodge then started to form her extensive collections which she bought during many visits to Europe, frequently with the advice of Lord Duveen.  It was certainly through the auspices of Duveen's company that she was able to acquire some of the celebrated pieces of French furniture which were then in Russia.  Her remarkable collection remained intact until 1970 when the works of art and furniture which were not bequeathed to the Detroit Institute of Art were sold at auction in London in 1971, including the present lot.

The porcelain figures

Both porcelain figures probably derive from engravings from Ferriol and Le Hay's Receuil de Cent Estampes Représentant Différentes Nations du Levant, published in Paris in 1714 with 102 plates, or from the reduced edition of 65 plates published in Nuremburg in 1719 by Christoph Weigel (c.1654-1726).  This set of engravings by various hands after drawings made from life by Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (1671-1737), was commissioned by Comte Charles de Ferriol, the French ambassador from 1697-1711 to the 'Sublime Porte' (the European epithet for the seat of the Turkish government in Constantinople), and the resulting book was edited by Le Hay. 

The original model for the figure of the Hungarian was made around 1750, and according to Rainer Rückert, it was derived from plate 76 of Ferriol and Le Hay, op. cit. (Rainer Rückert, Meissener Porzellan 1710-1810, Munich, 1966, p. 180, where a version in white is illustrated).  An example with similar coloring was sold, Sotheby's, Zurich, June 8, 2000, lot 651, illustrated; another example was sold, Sotheby's, New York, October 24, 2002, lot 1057, illustrated.  The figure of the Hungarian lady (also sometimes called 'Persian' or 'Oriental') is also probably modelled after an engraving from Ferriol and Le Hay, op.cit.   An identical figure was sold Sotheby's, December 8, 1989, lot 26, another formerly in the Rockefeller Collection was sold, Sotheby's, New York, April 11, 1980,lot 196, and another at Christie's, London, March 1, 1993, lot 244 ($9045).