A Pair of ‘Grand Tour’ Models of Ruins Celebrating the Corinthian Order

A fine Louis XVI style gilt-bronze mounted baby grand Piano by Gaveau à Paris. Serial number 67874. This fine baby grand piano has a quarter-veneered top with a stiff leaf cas...

A very rare Louis XVI period serinette or bird organ in the form of a transitional style gilt bronze mounted and marquetry inlaid miniature commode in the manner of gilbert, by Robert Richard, Paris. With a label for ' RICHARD - maitre facteur d’orgues et mécanicien / Rue de richelieu à la bibliothèque Du Roy / Paris 1775'. This rare Serinette or Bird Organ has a wooden cylinder barrel mounted by twelve pins and linked to twelve sound pipes. A crank attached to the front panel controls the bellows that activates the mechanism. The exceptional marquetry inlaid case is in the form of a gilt bronze mounted transitional style miniature commode. The top of the commode is inlaid with a landscape scene with buildings, opening to an interior with an allegory of Love Conquering All, represented by two doves perching on a bow and quiver. The front of the commode depicts two obelisks centred by a Fine musical trophy and each side is inlaid with panels depicting the Medici Vase. The back of the commode is decorated with floral marquetry. A closely related Serinette dating from circa 1770, also in the form of a miniature commode, with the marquetry case stamped by the master marqueteur Leonard Boudin, is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The term serinette is derived from serine, French for finch. The instrument worked like a small barrel organ with a barbed cylinder, wind box and lead pipes and produced a high, thin sound in imitation of birds. Other versions included a merline, which copied blackbirds and a turlutaine, which copied curlews. Used to teach caged birds to sing tunes, different barrels could be inserted to train different birds. It first appeared in France circa 1730 and became a popular drawing-room toy for fashionable women. An interesting painting commissioned in 1751 for Louis XV by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and now in the collection of the Louvre, depicts a refined lady seated in her salon playing a bird organ to encourage her bird to sing. Robert Richard Robert Richard was a Parisian organ and harpsichord maker and the mécanicien du roi to Louis XV and Louis XVI and was based in the Bibliothèque du Roi in rue de Richelieu. Initially working alongside the Cliquot family who acted as 'facteur d'orgue du Roi', he is recorded as building an organ for the church of Notre-Dame de Quebec, in Montreal in 1753 (destroyed in 1759) and as the inventor of a mechanical concert shown in an engraving by d'Eisen in 1769. Canon Jean Marie De La Corne described Robert Richard as : ''Le plus habile ouvrier de paris, fameux mechanitien et Homme de probité''. French, Dated 1775. Literature: Pierre Kjellberg, The French Furniture of the 17th century, The Editions of the Amateur, 2008 Count Francois de Salverte, Cabinetmakers of the 18th century, Editions of Art and History, 1934 Raymond Russell, Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue of Musical Instruments, Volume I - Keyboard Instruments,(London, 1968; p. 69.) Elizabeth Miller...

A fine pair of patinated bronze models of the townley vase, cast after the antique, by Auguste-Maximilien Delafontaine. The bronze stamped to the under...

‘Les Grands Faunes’, a large and very finely cast pair of gilt bronze and patinated bronze figural candelabra on green granite marble bases, after a model by François Rémond...

A Regence Style Gilt-Bronze and Boulle Marquetry Inlaid Grand Cartel de Applique, In the Manner of André-Charles Boulle. The eight-day twin-train movement, striking on a bell. The dial with a porcelain cartouche inscribed ‘Thuret a Paris’. The movement stamped Etienne Maxant and ‘12775: 8.1 EM’. This impressive and large cartel clock has a circular, arabesque chased, brass dial with Roman numerals on enamelled cartouches, with engraved Arabic seconds and polished steel hands. The dial sits within a waisted case, with large acanthus mounted gilt-bronze volutes...

A pair of large and finely patinated bronze models of a standing bull and a running cow after models by Isidor-Jules Bonheur, Cast on a Naturalistic Base. French, circa 1890. Signed 'I BONHEUR' and stamped 'PEYROL EDITEUR'. Bonheur was a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon and his naturalistic depiction of farm animals, including cattle, was one of his most popular subjects. The bronze was cast by his brother-in-law, Hippolyte Peyrol, who ran one of the most successful art foundries in Paris at this time. Isidore-Jules Bonheur (1827-1901) was the son of the painter Raymond Bonheur and younger brother of Rosa Bonheur, the famous sculptor. He was born in Bordeaux and studied painting, at first with his father and then with the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, moving on to sculpture in 1848. He made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1848 with a painting and plaster study of the same subject ‘African horseman attacked by a lioness’. From then onwards, Bonheur exhibited regularly at the Salon as well as other exhibitions, winning medals in 1865 and 1869 together with the prized Gold Medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1889. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1895. Most of Bonheur’s casts were by his uncle by marriage, Hippolyte Peyrol, whose tiny foundry mark is often very difficult to find. Bonheur’s studies range from farm animals, bears and tigers in a very naturalistic vein to equestrian groups. Although noted primarily for his small groups he did complete two large scale commissions, one to his sister Rosa, at Fontainbleau and the other, two stone lions at the steps of the Royal...

A Large and Incredible Pair of Rouge Marble ‘Grand Tour’ Models of Ruins Celebrating the Corinthian Order, Most Probably Attributed To The Workshop Of Benedetto Boschetti. The fist ...

A nicely carved pair of 19th century Grand Tour period giltwood souvenirs of fluted columns with Corinthian capitals.Now mounted on contemporary acrylic bases with a back channel for...

Italian Grand Tour Corinthian Style Stone / Marble Model of Ruins, Sienna Marble, Statue / Sculpture. Grand Tour Giallo Antico Marble Model of the Temple of Castor & Pollux. A very fine and early Roman neoclassical period grand tour Sienna...

Grand Tour model of the Eiffel Tower, now as a lamp, newly wired. The architectural model stands 30" high, 33" high to the top of the socket.

Large Grand Tour Bronze Model of the Place Vendôme, With Napoleon France, circa 1870s This exceptional Grand Tour bronze model of the Place Vendôme, dating back to the 1870s in France, is a magnificent tribute to history and artistry. Standing at an impressive height of 26 inches and mounted on a 6.75-inch square Belgian Black Marble base with a bronze fence...

Italian Grand Tour model of the ancient Temple of Vespasian located in the Roman Forum, Rome. Carved from alabaster, this is a handsome example of a souvenir carving which would have been collected by a European or American sophisticate making a Grand Tour of the ancient sites of Italy. This wonderful architectural miniature is evocative of another time and place. Roma Templo Di Vespasiano' etched into the black marble base. It has been drilled to be wired, not the first time I have owned one of these that had been mounted as a lamp. The Temple of Vespasian and Titus is located in Rome at the western end of the Roman Forum between the Temple of Concordia and the Temple of Saturn...