A pair of Louis XVI ormolu and cut-glass single-branch wall lights circa 1785

each with a stiff backplate decorated with scrolled foliate motifs and berried sprays and issuing foliate rinceaux terminating in eagle's masks all linked by ropes of faceted cut-glass beads, the lower part issuing a single fluted candle branch with acanthus leaf drip pan above an eagle and further foliate rinceaux.

Conceived in the goût étrusque or goût arabesque with its use of winged griffons, eagle heads combined with acanthus scrolls, the sparse but very controlled and elongated form of these wall-lights would indicate a specific commission from the mid-1780s.

A drawing of about 1780 attributed to Jean-Louis Prieur and now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs may be seen as a precursor to this later model (Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, vol. I, p. 241, fig. 4.5.4.)

A related pair of wall-lights in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (gift of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice) illustrated Ottomeyer, op. cit. p. 261, fig. 4.8.5. shows a very similar trailing base of flowers and berries. A drawing by François Rémond, circa 1785, of a candelabrum also shows similarities in its overall sparse form and similar iconography (H. Ottomeyer, op. cit. p. 266, fig. 4.9.5).
A pair of wall-lights centered by a similar winged griffon from the Russian Imperial Collections from the Collection of Akram Ojjeh was sold Sotheby's Monaco, 25-26 June 1979, lot 13.