PAIR OF TORCH HOLDERS " WITH SIRENS " Attributed to Georges JACOB (1739-1814) Received Master Carpenter in seats in 1769 Paris, Louis XVI period, circa 1780 Gilt wood H. 161 cm, L. 52 cm This rare model of torch stand, in carved and gilded wood, is distinguished by the extreme finesse of the treatment of its decoration and the inventiveness of its iconography allowing to attribute it to the great carpenter Georges Jacob. The torch support, circular in shape, is encircled by a frieze of rais-decoeur. The baluster shaft is punctuated by flutes with laurel and oak leaves. It rests on a hexagon carved with foliage. The triangular base is decorated with three mermaids supporting a vase from which the shaft emerges. In the center appears in a circular cavity a flower blooming. The whole composition sits on three flattened ball feet decorated with foliage. In view of the elegance of our model, the delicacy of the details and the originality of the iconography, it is appropriate to attribute our work to the work of Georges Jacob who worked at this period for the greatest figures of the Kingdom. The mermaids appearing in the lower part of the piece respond to the craze of the time for turqueries, launched by the Count of Artois for the realization of his first Turkish Boudoir at the Temple in 1776. In 1781, the latter commissioned Georges Jacob, for his Second Turkish Cabinet at the Château de Versailles, to make a gilded wooden console, carved on the uprights with leaning mermaids (fig. 1 and 2). The mermaid seems to be a recurrent motif in Jacob's work, as can be seen, for example, in the broken duchess stamped by the Master, made between 1780 and 1785 and preserved in the Musée Jacquemard-André (fig. 3). The faces of young women are treated in a similar way in the sphinges adorning a suite of seats made for the Cabinet de la Méridienne of Marie- Antoinette commissioned from the Master around 1785 (fig. 4). It is worth mentioning that a model of a mermaid, very similar to the one in our work, appears on the armrests of an armchair in a wax model executed around 1780 and attributed to Gilles-François Martin, modeler of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne under the direction of the architect Jacques Gondoin (1737-1818) and destined for Marie-Antoinette's Belvedere pavilion in Versailles (fig. 5). It is highly probable that our porte-torchères, considering their decoration, are the product of the imagination of an ornamentalist and merchant like Jean-Demosthène Dugourc (1749-1825), appointed in 1780 as Draughtsman of the Cabinet of Monsieur, brother of the King. He is at the origin of the "arabesque" taste which designates the style developed in the decorative arts of the 1780's where female figures ending in acanthus scrolls, leaning or facing each other on either side of a vase, are multiplied. In this regard, let us point out the pair of girandoles with women-atyre made around 1785 by François Rémond and kept today at Windsor Castle (fig. 6 and 7). Three young women, their bodies extended by foliage and goat's feet, support a vase. Under the object is a wrought circle, similar to our work, carved with a flowerette. They have the same expression as our mermaids, full of melancholy and resignation. Torchbearers under the reign of Louis XVI are still relatively rare. In its form and composition, our work can be compared to the one in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (fig. 8). The Residenz in Munich has a pair of pedestal tables stamped Master and dated around 1781, thus attesting that Georges Jacob made this type of furniture in his career (fig. 9).