Each with circular top and three ram's masks on moulded uprights with hoof feet joined by x-frames, on a concave-sided pedestal with panels enclosing laurel wreaths, on a leaf-moulded plinth and paw feet, redecorated, originally white painted and parcel-gilt, then bronzed and parcel-gilt, in the 18th century
57½ in. (146 cm.) high; 20 in. (51 cm.) diameter

Probably supplied to George John Montagu, 6th Earl of Sandwich (1773-1818), Hinchingbrooke House, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
With Jeremy Ltd., London, 1962.
David Style, Esq., Wateringbury Place, Maidstone, Kent; Christie's house sale, 1-2 June 1978, lot 526.
With Partridge Fine Arts, London.
Anonymous sale [Property from a Private Collection], Sotheby's New York, 23 January 1993, lot 272 or 273.
Lily & Edmond Safra; Sotheby's New York, 3 November 2005, lot 152 or 153.
With Pelham Galleries, 2006.
Dealing in Excellence A Celebration of Hotspur and Jeremy, Christie's London, 20 November 2008, lot 12.

G. Beard & J. Goodison, English Furniture 1500-1840, London, 1987, p. 196, fig. 4.

London, Victoria & Albert Museum, The International Art Treasures Exhibition (CINOA), 1962

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Lot Essay

These tall stands, comprising Bacchic tripods raised on altar-pedestals are likely to have been designed by James Wyatt, and may have been commissioned by George John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich (d. 1818), who inherited Hinchingbrooke, Cambridgeshire in 1792.
They would have served to support candelabra or vases in the corners of large rooms-of-entertainment, and are designed in the late 18th century 'Roman' fashion promoted by George IV, as Prince of Wales. The upper section comprises golden sacrificial-tripods that incorporate Etruscan pearl-wreathed and reed-gadrooned tazza bowls shaped like cassolette censers; while their bacchic ram monopodia incorporate reeded pilasters that are tied by patera-enriched rails conforming to those of a Roman bronze antiquity. The latter, which later featured in J.N.L. Durand's, Détailes Romains. Autels, Trepieds, Candelabres, Lampes, Meubles (1802), also provided the source for lamp-stands designed in 1794 for Prince George's Carlton House mansion. The drawing for these is likely to have been executed by the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham, while working in the offices of the Prince's architect Henry Holland (d. 1806) (see D. Stroud, Henry Holland, 1966, fig. 42).
The present tripods' hollow-sided pedestals, are japanned in trompe l'oeil Egyptian porphyry, while their pilasters terminate in palm-decked griffin-lion paws. These, like the accompanying bas-relief trophies of laurels framed in flowered and reeded tablets, evoke Apollo's Parnassus triumph as poetry deity and leader of the Muses of Artistic inspiration.
Related pedestals feature on white-japanned 'Tripods' that were designed in the mid-1790s by the court architect James Wyatt (d. 1813), and executed by his nephew Edward Wyatt (d. 1840) for Croome Court, Worcestershire (sold by the Croome Estate Trust, Christie's London, 4 July 2002, lot 82).