Pair of Egyptian candlesticks by Claude Galle, Paris circa 1807

Rare and beautiful pair of finely chiseled and mercury-gilded bronze candlesticks.
The circular bases decorated with guillochés and palmette friezes; the spindle-shaped shafts decorated with three busts of Egyptian women wearing Nemes* hairstyles and rings with palmette friezes are finished with three lion paws; they are topped with flower garland sockets and are topped with their original bobeches with water leaf friezes.

High quality of chiseling and mercury gilding with a dual matte and shiny patina.

Very good condition.

Empire period work circa 1807 attributable to the Parisian bronze worker Claude Galle (1759-1815)

Height: 28.5 cm; base diameter: 13.5 cm

Provenance: Important family of the French nobility

A very similar pair delivered by the upholsterer Pierre-François Susse on October 16, 1807 to the furniture repository for the bedroom of the Empress Joséphine at the Château de Rambouillet.
They are now kept in the Mobilier National under the inventory number "GML-4098-001" and are published in the work of Marie-France Dupuy-Baylet, "L'Heure, le Feu, la Lumière. Les bronzes du Mobilier National 1800-1870", Dijon, 2010, p. 147, notice 77.

* The Nemes is the most emblematic headdress of the pharaohs who wore it from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period.
He is known to the general public for his many representations, including the golden funerary mask of the pharaoh Tutankhamun or the head of the sphinx on the Giza plateau.

Our opinion:

Although our torches were delivered by the upholsterer Pierre François Susse to the furniture store in 1807, the latter probably acted as a merchant.
Like the upholsterer-cabinetmaker of rue Vivienne Alexandre Maigret who supplied furniture, bronzes and seats to the furniture store, Susse was based in the Faubourg St Honoré and probably ran a luxury business where he resold the most beautiful productions of his colleagues.
This model with barrels with three busts of women joined together ending in feet is a classic of the production of the famous bronzier Claude Galle; the first drawing is dated 1799 and from the years 1804-1805 he will provide several copies with variations for the palaces of Fontainebleau, Compiègne, or even the Tuileries…
Often, the shafts of these models are shorter and more “compact”, with simply adjoining heads; ours are more refined, with intermediate rings and a particularly fine decoration on the bases.
This is probably a special order of which we know of only a handful of copies.