Jean-Simon Deverberie 1764-1824
Literature
Elke Niehüser, "Die Französische Bronzeuhr", 1997, back cover, illustrating a Deverberie Pendule à l'Amerique flanked by two candelabra, with branches each held aloft by a young African female, very similar in features and wearing the same attire as the present figures, also both standing on similar circular plinths.
An extremely rare pair of Directoire gilt and patinated bronze candelabra by Jean-Simon Deverberie, each composed of a standing young African female with ivory teeth and eyes wearing only earrings, a gilt beaded necklace and a skirt, supporting on her head a magnificent elephant-shaped headdress with large ears and tusks between which the raised trunk supports a foliate cast stem and vase-shaped nozzle, the African beauty holding out her arms around which are looped winged dragon-shaped candle branches terminating in the creature's serpentine head and open mouth with rows of teeth, supporting on its head a conforming foliate cast stem and vase-shaped nozzle, each figure standing on a palmette cast circular plinth and spreading foot on a square base
Paris, date circa 1800
Height 49.5 cm, width 23 cm, depth 11 cm. each.
These candelabra are extremely rare if not unique for although Jean-Simon Deverberie (1764-1824) specialised in the production of bronzes that celebrated the notion of le bon sauvage none appear to be of this exact model. And though several similar examples by the same master are housed in Musée Duesberg, Mons, none combine the elephant headdress and dragon-shaped branches.