ATTRIBUTED TO BOULLE FILS, CIRCA 1730-40

BOULLE AND BOULLE FILS: A DYNASTY OF ÉBÉNISTES

With its elegant central vase adorned with acanthus leaves and garlands, and flanked by caryatids and busts of Bacchus, the design of this chandelier is related to the oeuvre of André-Charles Boulle (1641-1732), ébéniste, ciseleur, doreur and sculpteur du Roi, and attributed to the workshop of his sons.

André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) was an exception to the rules of the trade, and thanks to a royal privilege granted to him in 1672 - because he was considered by Colbert to be “le plus habile de Paris dans son métier” - he was permitted to produce both cabinetwork and bronzes for furnishings and ornaments in his own workshop. He defined himself as cabinetmaker, chaser, gilder and sculptor to the king until 1732, although his workshop was taken over by his sons in 1715. His prestigious clientele included members of the royal family (the King himself, the Queen, the Grand Dauphin), as well as powerful financiers, ministers and other high-ranking officials, including Claude François de la Croix, Pierre Crozat and Pierre Thomé.

His engravings, published around 1720 in Nouveaux deisseins de meubles et ouvrages de bronze et de marqueterie inventés et gravés par André-Charles Boulle, chez Mariette, are a valuable source of information and reflect his production fairly accurately. Boulle also used the terms lustre and chandelier interchangeably. A number of motifs have been published, and although not all were executed to the letter, various combinations and variations of the same motifs can be observed among Boulle's identified chandeliers.

As early as 1715, Boulle handed over his workshops to his four sons: Jean-Philippe (1678-1744), Pierre-Benoît (circa 1683-1741), André-Charles II (1685-1749) and Charles-Joseph (1688-1754). All four sons were granted the very prestigious Royal title ébéniste du roi. Although based on designs created and used during André-Charles’ management of the Boulle workshop, it is most likely that this chandelier was produced during the late Régence or early Louis XV periods, when the atelier was under the management of the Boulle fils. André-Charles Boulle died in 1732, but his four continued producing masterful objects for several decades, being recorded active through Charles-Joseph's death in 1754. Their work continued to be in fashion, as reflected by the fact that the Marquise de Pompadour herself acquired un lustre de Boulle in 1753 from the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux.

CHANDELIERS AT THE BOULLE ATELIERS

As the scholarship of Jean-Pierre Samoyault illustrates, chandeliers were among the most expensive items in André-Charles Boulle's workshop (see J.-P. Samoyault, André-Charles Boulle et sa famille. Nouvelles recherches. Nouveaux documents, Geneva, 1979, p. 70); for example, eight-branch, un-gilt chandeliers were sold for 2,000 livres. In his own indispensable study, Jean Néré Ronfort assumes that chandelier production slightly predates 1700, despite the absence of any mention of a luminaire in the 1700 inventory, in contrast to the 1715 deed of relinquishment from Boulle to his sons (see J.N. Ronfort, ‘Katalog der Bronzearbeiten und der Pendulen von André-Charles Boulle’, chapter 11 in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, eds., Vergoldete Bronzen: Die Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus, II, Munich, 1986, pp. 475-520).

Each chandelier in Boulle’s time was produced in series of three to eight, and it is estimated that Boulle designed around ten different chandelier models. When a fire engulfed almost the entire workshop in 1720, eight chandeliers of at least six different designs were lost, along with the models that were also lost forever. Only a few fragments survived the incident, and these are listed in inventory prepared after Boulle's death in 1732.

THE PRESENT MODEL

Although no design drawings for this chandelier have yet been identified, various ornaments, such as the female masks or the acanthus leaves forming the console arms, are similar to the engravings published in 1710 by Daniel Marot in the Nouveaux Livre d'Orfèvrerie Inventé par Marot Architecte du Roi. This chandelier can also be compared with two drawings attributed to the silversmith Claude Ballin, previously in the Tessin collection and now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inventory nos. NMH THC 813 and NMH THC 809). The first, dated circa 1685, depicts a chandelier with leafy console branches supported by similarly-shaped masks, while the second shows acanthus leaves wrapping around the branches and scrolls flanking a central vase.

Among the known examples closest to the present lot, one is in the Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam. Attributed to André-Charles Boulle and dated circa 1710-1715, it was acquired on the Paris art market in 1748 for 550 thaler by King Frederick II (1712-1786) of Prussia for the palace’s audience room, where it still hangs. Another chandelier of the same model, featuring several similar ornaments, is engraved with the arms of the Comte d'Aumont de Rochebaron and is thought to have been commissioned by Louis, 3^rd Duc d'Aumont (1666-1723) or by his son, Louis-Marie, 4^th Duc d'Aumont (1691-1723) for the Hôtel d'Aumont in Paris. It was subsequently sold as part of the estate of Louis-Marie-Augustin, 5^th Duc d'Aumont de Rochebaron (1709-1782) in 1782, when it was acquired by the Marquis de Collange. It was not until much later that it reappeared on the market at Aguttes, Neuilly-sur-Seine, December 14, 2010 as lot 146. A further pair, very similar in design and in its treatment of the busts, but differing most prominently in their addition of busts to the larger upper knop, is preserved in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. BK-16893-A,B, see R. Baarsen, Paris 1650-1900: Decorative Arts in the Rijksmuseum, New Haven and London, 2013, cat. no. 16, pp. 92-95). Finally, a suite of four chandeliers, often considered to have served as models for the others in existence, was confiscated from the Duc de Brissac during the Revolution in 1795 and subsequently donated to the Mazarine Library in Paris, where it remains to this day. For a survey of related models and illustrations of the drawings in Stockholm, see Ottomeyer and Pröschel, op. cit., I, Munich, 1986, pp. 50-55, figs. 1.6.1-12.