Designed in the goût Étrusque manner fashionable in the 1780s, these ormolu-mounted bronze candlesticks depict the reclining figures of L'Etude and La Philosophie studying by the light of flaming finials which adorn the tips of these candlesticks, modelled as oil lamps.
Models for Le Philosophe, L'Etude and also La Lectrice were first executed in unglazed porcelain in 1780 to designs by Louis-Simon Boizot (d. 1809), Sculpteur du Roi to Louis XVI. He succeeded Etienne Falconet as Director of Sculpture at the Royal Sèvres Manufactory in 1773 and later worked in conjunction with the celebrated bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire (see E. Bourgeois, Le Biscuit de Sèvres, Paris, 1909, vol. II, p. 22).
Boizot’s designs were employed by the Sèvres Manufactory and were typically set on a moulded oval plinth base, examples of which can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc. 769-1882 and 769A-1882).
The figures of Le Philosophe and L'Etude were subsequently employed in bronze by François Rémond, circa 1784, in the design he produced for a clock commissioned by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre which proved tremendously popular in the late 18th century.
A design for an ormolu-mounted and patinated bronze oil-lamp, with the figure of L'Etude features in a drawing of circa 1785, attributed to Pierre-Phillippe Thomire, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (no. 8195) and illustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 298, ill. 4.18.6. It is likely that Thomire obtained Boizot’s model for the two figures of Le Philosophe and L'Etude due to their close working relationship at Sèvres, where Thomire was appointed artistic Director following the death of Jean-Claude Duplessis in 1783.
A related pair of bronze candlesticks, attributed to Thomire can be found in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. 88.SB.113).
The popularity of this model travelled as far afield as Russia. A single bronze candlestick can be seen in Jean-Laurent Monnier's Portrait of Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna, Princess Louise of Baden (1779-1826) of 1802, now in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, which shows her standing by a mantelpiece with an oil lamp after Boizot's design beside her (an engraving after Monier's painting is illustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, op.cit, p. 294, ill. 4.17.4). The lamp shown in the painting might be identified as one of the pair preserved at Pavlovsk (E. Ducamp, ed., Pavlovsk: The Collections, Paris, 1993, 5. 192, cat. 42).
A variant of this model later found popularity in England during the Regency period.