LATE 17TH/EARLY 18TH CENTURY, POSSIBLY NORTH EUROPEAN

THE FORM
These elegant torchères are an astonishingly rare survival of large-scale wrought iron furniture from the Louis XIV period. They were designed to support candelabra and would likely have flanked a side-table with mirror above, or been placed in the corners of a room. This type of illumination became popular in France during the first decades of the reign of Louis XIV, when most of the rooms in the state apartments included tall candle stands with silver or crystal candelabra on top (R. Baarsen, Paris 1650-1900, New Haven, 2013, p. 63). Their form, each conceived as a series of modified baluster and inverse-baluster knops on a tripod base, is emblematic of the period in France, when designers and architects successfully developed a novel style based on the vocabulary of Classical architecture, but transformed in a uniquely French mode, emphasizing muscular movement, majestic proportions and a grand density of decoration. Designs for such torchères are frequently highly dynamic sculptural, as illustrated in seven designs by Bérain, published in Oeuvres de Jean Bérain: Ornemens inuentez par I. Bérain et se vendent chez Monsieur Thuret aux Galleries du Louvre, 1711, pp. 36, 43 and 44. Numerous giltwood examples are extant, including a pair, circa 1700, sold Christie’s, 30 September 2014, lot 13 and a similar pair, circa 1685, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (acc. nos. 1953-18-1 and -2). A figural pair in silvered wood was sold Christie’s, Paris, 29 Apr 2014, lot 100. Examples by Boulle have been sold Christie’s, London, 12 Jun 2003, lot 30; and 21 June 2000, lot 30.

ARCHITECTURAL WROUGHT-IRON AND THE ART OF THE SERRURIER
Remarkably, these torchères are constructed in wrought iron, a far more labor-intensive medium than the typical giltwood. They are undoubtedly the product of a master serrurier, whose trade comprised not only the fabrication of locks, keys and door hardware, but indeed all manner of large-scale architectural ironwork. In the eighteenth century, the technology to melt iron to a fully liquid state still eluded these artisans, who instead would have heated the metal until it reached a red-hot and malleable state, and then shaped the softened material using hammers. In the case of present torchères—an identical group of four, each composed of small sections repeated three times around its three sides—the craftsmen may have used molds to aid in efficiency and uniformity.

Engravings and pattern books by architects of the period reveal that the work of the serruriers was integral to the art of architecture and decoration. Pages devoted to the designs of iron grilles, fences and gates, balusters and stair-rails, as well as wall-lights and brackets for lanterns and trade signs appear in the works of the era’s most prominent designers, including Jean and Daniel Marot, Jean le Pautre, Jean Bérain, Antoine Pierretz Le Jeune and Francois de Poilly. For an illustrated lexicon of the design elements in both an entry gate and a garden gate, see the intricately detailed engraving published by Augustin-Charles d'Aviler in his 1691 Cours d’Archicture, p. 177, plate 44A.

A number of designs by master serruriers themselves have also survived, their authors including, from the late seventeenth century, Hugues Brisville, Michel Hasté, Robert Davesne and Gilles Bellin. Of particular interest to the present torchères is a group of three designs for lecterns and a candle-stand, captioned “chandellier pascal,” by the master serrurier G. Vallee, about whom no biographical information is known aside from a colophon to a group of designs engraved by his son S. Vallee near the end of the seventeenth century. Given the scale of the book-supports atop the lecterns, it can be presumed that the designs reflect wrought-iron stands of a comparable scale to our torchères; reproduced in L. Blanc, Le fer forgé en France aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Oeuvres gravées des anciens maîtres serruriers, architectes, dessinateurs et graveurs, Paris and Brussels, 1928, pl. 68.

THE COLLECTION OF M. AND MME. HENRY FARMAN
The magnificent French eighteenth-century decorative art collected by Henry Farman (1874-1958) and his wife Henriette (1889-1972), née Delot, was sold at the Palais Galliera, 15 March 1973, in one of the legendary sales of the twentieth century. Henry (or Henri) was a British-French aviation pioneer who set records in flight speed, height and duration in the 1900s and 1910s before entering into partnership with his brothers, Maurice and Dick, to design and manufacture aircraft under the firm Farman Aviation Works. He was made a chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur in 1919, and is celebrated in a 1929 monument by Paul Landowski on the rue Henri-Farman in the 15th arrondissement, near the Paris Héliport.

As collectors, M. and Mme. Farman displayed a taste for the most exceptional furniture and objects. Among the treasures in their collection were a Royal lacquer commode by BVRB, delivered to Versailles in 1745 for the bedroom of the new Dauphine, the Maria Theresa Raphaëlle of Spain, which has since reentered the Versailles collection (obj. no. V.2019.46); a pair of swan-form chenets made in 1755 for Madame de Pompadour, later sold Christie's, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 5 ($721,000); a Ming porcelain censer mounted with a Kangxi figure as a pot-pourri probably by Caffieri and delivered to Marie Joseph d'Hostun de la Baume-Tallard, duc d'Hostun and duc de Tallard in 1745, later sold from the Riahi Collection Christie's, London, 6 December 2012, lot 3 (£802,850); and a remarkable green-painted and grisaille-japanned Louis XVI secrétaire à abattant by René Dubois, later sold Les Collections du Château de Gourdon, Christie's, Paris, 31 March 2011, lot 733 (€361,000).