BY BENJAMIN LEWIS VULLIAMY, LONDON, CIRCA 1805-10

These candlesticks, conceived in the French antique manner popularised by C. Percier and P. Fontaine's Receuil de Décorations Intérieurs, 1801, are likely to have been designed partly under Beckford's own direction. The prototype dupe of candlesticks appears to be the silver-gilt candlesticks bearing Beckford heraldic charges or devices that he commissioned from the Parisian goldsmith Henri Auguste to a design by the architect Jean-Guillaume Moitte (d. 1810), while residing at the Hotel Kinsky, rue St. Dominique, Paris, during 1801-3 (M. Snodin and M. Baxter, op. cit., p. 827).
This pair are conceived as pedestal-supported Roman candelabra, whose vase-nozzles are wrapped in acanthus-calyxes with ribbon-stems flowered with the Beckford 'cinquefoil' rose crest, while their reed-capped balusters, supported on inverted palm-calyxes, are wrapped by palm-enriched acanthus, which corresponds to that wreathing their domed plinths. The drum-pedestals are guarded by addorsed goat-horned demi-chimera, recalling the creature that was sacred to the sun-god Apollo, while their trellised compartments unite Beckford's 'cross fleury' or 'Latimer cross' device with the 'cinquefoil' rose inherited from the Hamiltons on his maternal side. Beckford, who once wrote about his 'pride of Ancestory', inherited the 'cross fleury' from the Bishop Latimer, who had been martyred in 1555 by Queen Mary I. In John Rutter's views of the romantic interiors of Fonthill Abbey, published as Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey, 1823, a pair of such candlesticks, supported on Louis XIV 'boulle' gueridon-stands, are illustrated in the St. Michael Gallery, while another eight furnished the Elizabethan style 'pier-set' stands in the adjoining Gallery. This was named after King Edward III (d. 1377), founder of the Order of the Garter and displayed in its frieze the coats-of-arms of all the Knights of the Garter from whom Beckford's daughter, Susan Euphemia, Duchess of Hamilton claimed lineage (C. Wainwright, op. cit., p. 126, fig. 107; p. 114, fig. 97 and p. 115, fig. 98). Rutter stated that the St. Michael Gallery was lit by candlesticks 'executed by Vulliamy', the 'ormolu Manufacturer in ordinary' to George Prince of Wales, later George IV, Benjamin Vulliamy (d. 1820) of Pall Mall. Rutter also included the candlesticks with boulle stands in his view of the grand Drawing-Room (Wainwright op. cit., p. 140, fig. 120).
In all, six candlesticks of this model have been identified. The present lot forms two from a set of four from the Estate of Beatrice Lagrave Maltby, sold Christie's, New York, 16 April 1994, lot 15, while a further pair was sold by W.N. Stubb, Esq., in these Rooms on 15 April 1982, lot 2. The other pair from the Beatrice Lagrave Maltby set was sold from the collection of Edward Sarofim; Christie's, London, 16 November 1995, lot 111 (£106,000, including premium).