THE DESIGN
The use of distinctive lily-spray branches was au courant from the 1780s, and featured for instance on François-Joseph Bélanger's design for a mantelpiece garniture, now in the musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (illustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, 4.11.13). An identical pair of candelabra, but with white marble bodies, was sold anonymously at Sotheby's Monaco, 4 March 1984, lot 445.

THE MADAME LELONG PROVENANCE
Madame Camille Lelong, née Laurentine-Françoise Bernage (1840-1902) was a distinguished Parisian collector and dealer in art and antiques. Mme. Lelong owned the Hôtel Rouillé de Meslay on the Quai de Béthune, a quaint street along the southern edge of the Île Saint-Louis (see G. Riat and A. Teixeira de Mattos, ‘Paris Sales’, The Burlington Gazette, London, August 1903, vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 153-155). Armed with a keen eye, charm and self-assuredness, Mme. Lelong acquired a vast collection of magnificent works, including a great amount of eighteenth-century furniture. Her death in 1902 was followed by a number of sales of her collection in the spring and summer of 1903 by Galerie Georges Petit written about extensively both in France and abroad—part of the burgeoning trend of fashionable society auctions, which performed extremely well and drove up prices. Mme. Lelong’s sale was so extensive and of such high caliber, that in 1903 French art historian Émile Dacier predicted that: “Undoubtedly, most of [the objects] will take their place in a few palaces on Fifth Avenue, but we would be hard pressed to regret it beyond measure; since they will tell grandsons of billionaire trustmen how we too have been rich, rich in grace, distinction, elegance, refinement, rich in taste, rich in spirit” (see E. Dacier, 'L’antiquaire de l’île Saint-Louis', Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, April 1903, p. 254).