Case 19 2013/14: a gilt bronze centrepiece by D.R. Gastecloux
Expert adviser’s statement
Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any
illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council
England Website
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Brief Description of items
A gilt-bronze table centrepiece signed and dated ‘D.R.Gastecloux inv.&
exec.1768’ 30.5 cm high; 43.5 cm wide; 24.5 cm deep (figure 1)
2. Context
The name Gastecloux is associated with the production of gilt-bronzes in
Paris and St Petersburg from 1740 onwards. The signature D.R.Gastecloux
on underside of the centrepiece is thought to represent a member of the same
wider Huguenot family as René Gastecloux, founder, recorded as working in
Paris in the 1740s and Étienne Gastecloux, bronzier, Professeur de Fonte et
de Ciseleure recorded from 1770 at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St
Petersburg, during the time of Catherine the Great (d.1796) and her
successors Tsar Paul I (d.1801) and Alexander I (d.1825). Furthermore D.R.
Gastecloux can be identified with a Denis René Gastecloux, of the parish of
St Anne’s Soho, London, who was married twenty-five years earlier on 27
April 1743 at St Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf, London, to (Marie) Magdalen Griblin of
the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, Middlesex, the daughter of the Huguenot
refugee silversmith Isaac Griblin or Gribelin.
Provenance: D.R.Gastecloux, 1768; Almost certainly Brigadier-General
Horace Somerville Sewell, CMG, DSO, Légion d’honneur (d.1953) and by
descent at Tysoe Manor, Warwickshire; sold at auction Holloways, Banbury,
24 July 1987; Jeremy Ltd., London; Christie’s, London 4 July 2013 lot 4.
3.
Waverley criteria
The Gastecloux centrepiece meets the second and third Waverley Criteria.
It demonstrates the continuing international network of designers, craftsmen
and retailers of Huguenot origin that promoted the exchange of designs
across Europe and beyond and the highest standards of manufacture to meet
an increasingly sophisticated international market. Hitherto unpublished, the
centrepiece is of exceptional design and manufacture, beautifully cast, chased
and finished. It forms part of the tradition of the capriccio – inventive
architecture which is realized in painted representation or as a temporary
construction often recorded for posterity in engraved form. This is a rare
example of a small-scale architectural capriccio realized in metal in three
dimensions.
This is the only signed and dated eighteenth-century centrepiece in
architectural form executed in gilt-bronze associated with London. Other
contemporary European examples are recorded in porcelain (figure 2) and in
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silver. Its design reflects the continuing European interest in experimental
buildings which were often conceived as features in a landscape garden,
inspired by Le Jardin Anglais, or temporary structures built to celebrate a
particular national event such a royal birth or a military victory.
DETAILED CASE
1. Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive Summary,
and any comments.
The centrepiece is in the form of a multiple-domed pavilion with a central
pierced and removable turret supporting a garlanded vase finial. This is
flanked by two further removable domed covers with pierced obelisk-shaped
finials and bull’s eye dormer windows. The pavilion is three-tiered with a
balustrade dividing the arcaded ground storey from the clerestory immediately
above. The oval central interior has an engraved floor which is raised from the
surrounding exterior plateau, which is also engraved, and is in turn raised
from the table by four balustraded corner staircases with vase finials and
curved down-swept steps. To either side are shell-lidded wells – their interior
gilding in pristine condition, separately inserted into openings in the outer
plateau (figure 3) which provide suitable containers for dry condiments such
as salt or sugar. On the front and back edge of the outer plateau are foliatewrapped cartouches, intended, but never used, for applied badges of
ownership – a cipher (entwined initials) or an armorial crest. The signature
‘D.R.Gastecloux inv.&.exec. 1768’ is engraved on the underside of the
plateau where more than forty-five secured screw ends are visible, providing
evidence for the complexity of manufacture of this sophisticated model, made
up of over three hundred separate cast elements, each beautifully chased and
finished both inside and out.
The significance of the item
This is a unique example of an architectural model formed as a table
centrepiece in gilt-bronze although architect-designed centrepieces were
made in silver in the mid 18th century. By the 1680s the epergne (known in
France as the surtout de table) had begun to take shape as a grand
centrepiece, which often remained on the table throughout the meal. It
provided a range of services for diners from lighting to serving food, and was
a flexible and adaptable table ornament. The centrepiece was the most
expensive and important item in the dinner service. An essential element of
the very grandest English and European dining-tables by the 1730s, it
remained a focus for inventive design throughout the 18th century. Epergnes
and other new dining equipment complemented the new foods and dining
etiquette from the French court. Service à la Française, where guests helped
each other from dishes within reach, as well as more informal suppers,
changed dining customs.
Between 1730 and 1760 the dinner service developed as a homogenous
entity, the costly silver dishes, tureens, sauceboats and condiment sets were
decorated to a common theme. They were set out symmetrically on the table,
with the attention focused on the centrepiece or epergne.
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The present example does not have an obvious practical purpose. Its form,
dominated by three domes, is reminiscent of condiment or cruet sets made to
contain two silver-mounted glass ewers for oil and vinegar and a central
caster for powdered mustard, but although the central turret and flanking
domes lift off they could not accommodate glass liners. The real significance
of this centrepiece lies in its representation of European architectural design
of the mid-eighteenth century. Architecture lay at the heart of Enlightenment
philosophy. Such a representation of the sophisticated development of
Baroque and Rococo building design was intended as a talking point for
cultured guests, reminding them of their European travels and serving as a
spring board for conversation.
The comparatively small size indicates that it may have been intended for
dessert and placed for that purpose on a separate table such as that shown in
a French painting recording ‘Un diner dans la salle des fêtes au palais des
princes de Salm’ circa 1770 (figure 4). For special feasts, diners traditionally
moved to another architectural setting to enjoy dessert, often to a banqueting
house in the garden or even on the roof. During winter months, a separate
table in the Dining Room might conveniently be prepared in advance for
serving dessert. As the domes lift for ease in filling the structure, for special
occasions, it may have contained sugared sweetmeats coloured with natural
dyes including saffron, powdered violets, spinach juice or cochineal and even
partly gilded with gold leaf. It could be entwined with garlands of silk flowers
(fresh flowers were not used as the scent might clash with the delicate aroma
of the prepared food and wines). It is conceivable that this centrepiece was
intended to contain candles or as a perfume burner but there is no evidence
of the wear which such use would entail.
The maker
If Denis René Gastecloux is indeed connected with René Gastecloux,
founder, based in Paris in the 1740s, as their common Christian name would
imply, this might explain Denis René Gastecloux’s particular familiarity with
the extravagant style in architecture promoted in Paris by Juste-Aurèle
Meissonnier in his capacity of Dessinateur des Menus Plaisirs at the French
Court. Meissonnier was responsible for producing settings for displays of
fireworks in 1726 and 1729. The first, occasioned by the return to health of the
young King Louis XV, was never executed; the second celebrated the birth of
the Dauphin. The setting for this second firework display was in the form of a
temple placed in the centre of a colonnade. Above the temple, a figure of
Jupiter presided. Further allegorical statues witnessed the significance of the
occasion (figure 5). These designs were published individually in the 1730s
and as a series in the 1740s. Contemporary French critics noted that
Meissonnier’s architectural inventions were inspired by the Roman Baroque
architectural tradition established by Bernini, Borromini and Pietro da Cortona.
This centrepiece, is, in plan, closest to Borromini’s Roman church S. Carlo
alle Quattre Fontane.
If the Denis René Gastecloux who signed the centrepiece is identified as the
Denis René Gastecloux who married Magdalen Grib(e)lin in London in 1743,
he was then living in the parish of St Anne’s Soho, amongst a community of
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talented British and European artists, designers and craftsmen, dominated by
French-speaking descendents of Huguenot refugees who had settled in
London before and after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in October
1685. In 1738, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, an arbiter of taste in
London, had urged his fellow citizens to travel to ‘Old Soho’ and spend two or
three months there in order to meet French people and ‘learn a little French’.
It is not known exactly where Denis René Gastecloux and his new wife set up
home, although their three children, Charlotte, Esther and Isaac, were
baptised at the Westminster Huguenot Church of the Savoy, Spring Gardens
and Des Grecs between May 1750 and June 1752, indicating that the family
was still based in London’s West End. Gastecloux was undoubtedly familiar
with the many artistic opportunities offered by the cosmopolitan nature of the
Soho community. These included the juxtaposition of foreign and native
goldsmiths, jewellers, clockmakers, designers and engravers, who enjoyed
the freedom to work in a range of different materials as they lived beyond the
confines of the City of London where the ancient guilds had their
headquarters. Such opportunities were not available to specialist craftsmen in
Paris or French regional cities where different disciplines were still rigidly
controlled by the guild system. Soho was also home to specialist print sellers
who supplied the very latest designs and engraved ornament from France, a
constant source of inspiration to patrons and craftsmen alike. Gastecloux’s
wife was almost certainly a member of the celebrated Blois family of
engravers, watchmakers and goldsmiths, the Gribelins. Simon Gribelin was
the best known of those who settled in London, where he joined the
Clockmakers’ Company in the early 1680s and subsequently published
designs for ‘jewellers, watch-makers and all other artists’, still advertised for
sale in London in 1738 after his death. By the 1760s, Dorothy Mercier’s
printshop at the sign of the Golden Ball in Windmill Street, near Golden
Square supplied ‘All Sorts of Italian, French and Flemish Prints’ (She was the
widow of Philip Mercier, Berlin-trained artist of Huguenot birth) whereas
Celeste Regnier, the companion of the Lyons-born sculptor, Louis François
Roubiliac, with premises in Newport Street, Long Acre, also sold ‘All Sorts of
the most curious Prints, Italian, French, English, Dutch and others’ which
included ‘Gardens, Fountains, Statues, Vases, Antique and Modern’.
Lewis (Marie Louis) Gastecloux, born in 1776, described in the July 2013
Christie’s catalogue entry for the centrepiece as the son of Denis René
Gastecloux, was later recorded as a clock and watchmaker in Parsons Green,
Fulham. As Lewis Gastecloux was born thirty years after the marriage of
Denis René Gastecloux, it is more probable he was grandson to Denis René
Gastecloux (and Magdalen Griblin), perhaps the son of Isaac Gastecloux.
The Mary Gastecloux of Fulham who subscribed to Matthew Taylor’s
England’s Bloody Tribunal: or Popish Cruelty Displayed in 1772, was
probably also a relative, and provides further evidence that the Gastecloux
family were well established in London during the second half of the 18th
century. Despite the uncertainty of the exact relationship of one Gastecloux
craftsman to another, the cited evidence demonstrates that the Gastecloux
family in London were closely associated with the clock-making, engraving
and goldsmiths’ trades.
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The Provenance
The Hon. Brigadier-General Horace Somerville Sewell, CMG, DSO (and bar),
Légion d'honneur (1881–1953) was an officer in the British Army during World
War I, notable for his mixed-race ancestry.
It is not recorded whether the centrepiece descended in the Sewell family or
was acquired by Horace Sewell after his marriage in 1916. The family were
amongst the earliest investors in Jamaica and had further Jamaican
connections through marriage to the Lewis family. Robert Sewell (1751-1828)
the fourth son of Sir Thomas Sewell of Ottershaw Park, Surrey, married
Sarah, daughter of William Lewis of Jamaica in 1775. Robert Sewell served
as Attorney-General of Jamaica until 1795 when he settled at Oak End Lodge,
Iver, Bucks as agent for the Colony. In Jamaica, the Sewells were
benefactors of St Michael’s Anglican Church at Clarks Town, Trelawney
parish, where family members were buried.
Horace Sewell was born in Wales on 10th February 1881; he was the third
son of Henry Sewell, who was in turn the eldest son of the prominent Jamaica
planter William Sewell and the mulatto former slave Mary McCrea. William
Sewell went to Jamaica shortly after the abolition of slavery and bought up a
number of estates. Henry Sewell returned to England, where he married and
eventually settled at Steephill Castle near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, but he
inherited his father's Jamaica plantation empire in 1872, and subsequently
divided his time between England and Jamaica, eventually relocating
permanently back to Jamaica. In the 1890s the Sewell family still owned
extensive estates in St Ann (Cave Vallery and Drax Hall) and Trelawney
(Hyde, Steelfield and Vale Royal) parishes of Jamaica – they are particularly
associated with the plantation Arcadia in Trelawney, which overlooks Derby
Beach where they also owned the wharf from whence sugar and rum were
shipped back to England. For a vivid account of life on the Sewell family
plantation see the recently published Diana Lewes, A Year in Jamaica,
Memoirs of a girl in Arcadia in 1889, 2013.
Horace Sewell was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College,
Cambridge, before joining the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards in 1900. His
regimental nickname was "Sambo", apparently a reference to his Jamaican
roots. In April 1918, he was promoted to command the 1st Cavalry Brigade of
the British Army, which he led until the end of the Great War. General Sewell
was a highly decorated soldier, earning the DSO in 1915, the French Légion
d'honneur in 1916, a bar to his DSO for service at the Battle of Cambrai in
1917, and the CMG in 1919, as well as being twice wounded and five times
mentioned in dispatches. In 1916, he married the daughter of the New York
gypsum magnate Jerome Berre King.
During World War II, Brigadier-General Sewell was attached to the British
Information Service in New York. He settled at the medieval Tysoe Manor in
Warwickshire, but latterly spent much of his time on Jamaica, where he
served as a Justice of the Peace.
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2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item.
The engraved signature on the underside of the centrepiece demonstrates the
maker’s pride in his achievement and his personal responsibility for marketing
this production. The Latin form of signature is that found on contemporary
European and British sculpture indicating responsibility for the design as well
as the execution. Nevertheless the signature is not cast into the model as
practised in Paris by leading contemporary bronziers – Caffieri, for example.
The signature could therefore be a later addition, possibly engraved when the
work was sold, suggesting that the centrepiece might have been made earlier
in D.R. Gastecloux’s life. This could explain the strongly Rococo character of
the model, although in the late 1760s, despite the emerging Neo-classical
style, the Rococo was still in demand from more conventional patrons. As a
work of art the centrepiece demonstrates the high level of skill that Gastecloux
had mastered; it may have been made to show potential patrons in order to
demonstrate the quality of which he was capable. The centrepiece also
demonstrates the advantages of gilt-bronze over that of silver. Bronze is a
harder metal than silver and gilt-bronze is easier to clean. Although silver
centrepieces could also be mercury gilded, the softer metal would not have
lent itself well to casting in so many sections to create such a complex
architectural form.
The gilded surface complemented the dessert course when traditionally silvergilt plates and flatware were set on the table in contrast to the silver dishes
and flatware associated with the entrées. Furthermore the gilt-bronze surface
would have appealed to sophisticated patrons as it complemented the
European taste for furniture embellished with gilt-bronze mounts and wallmounted gilt-bronze lighting equipment including chandeliers and girandoles.
The taste for gilt-bronze emerged in France following the royal edict issued by
Louis XIV in 1689 to melt down existing silver furniture to help finance military
campaigns. French goldsmiths who did not emigrate for economic or religious
reasons, turned to the alternative luxury material of gilt-bronze in order to
maintain their livelihood.
If this fantastic table creation was inspired by temporary architectural
structures associated with special events such as firework displays or by
garden pavilions, its form is distinguished from the prototypes provided by
Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier by the conspicuous lack of figurative ornament. Its
comparatively small size is hardly sufficient as a setting for figures modelled in
porcelain or sugar, unless made in miniature. However, such decoration
remained fashionable. In 1738 a Saxon court confectioner created a cupola of
blue sugar in the centre of the table at the entrance to which stood the god of
marriage with on either side two intertwined hearts ‘properly marked out on a
narrow band of glass, decked with red confectionery’. In 1762, in Berlin,
James Boswell witnessed sugar sculptures being broken open to reveal
verses before being eaten. Such sugar sculptures led to the demand for
porcelain figures intended to be viewed in the round as ornaments to the
dining table. An interesting comparison is provided by the porcelain
centrepiece featuring Catherine the Great enthroned beneath a baldacchino
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which is surrounded by appropriate allegorical figures extolling her political
virtues as a ruler at the time of the Russo-Turkish war (figure 2). This dates
from 1772-3 and was the gift of Frederick II of Prussia – modelled by Friedrich
Elias Meyer, the leading sculptor at the Berlin porcelain manufactory, it
formed part of a magnificent dessert service.
Local, regional and national importance
The survival of this centrepiece provides important evidence for the study of
European bronze production in the mid-18th century for which there is lack of
documentation. Although retailers including Thomas Harrache, jeweller,
goldsmith and toyman, with fashionable premises in Pall Mall (1750-1775)
advertised bronzes for sale, there is a lack of documentary evidence for this
aspect of production in London. Two sets of signed brass candlesticks in a
private North American collection record specialist contemporary London
braziers and founders; a set of four Rococo candlesticks signed by Jon.
Bignall and chased by Robert Clee, London, 1745, retain their original gilding;
a pair of brass candlesticks, circa 1750-60, are signed by Edward Berry,
London, whose trade card records his shop in St Paul’s Church Yard.
Leading European sculptors working in London, John Michael
Rysbrack(d.1770) and Louis François Roubiliac (d.1762) supplied small scale
models as decorative mounts in bronze and silver for elaborate musical
clocks, both in relief and in the round. The emergence of Denis René
Gastecloux as a documented craftsman specializing in this field provides a
vital clue which will encourage research into the organization, production and
export of gilt-bronze ornaments and figures when London was emerging as a
centre for the export and marketing of objects of art for international gift and
purchase. This outstanding centrepiece is a rarely documented example and
provides important new evidence for an emerging field of study for which a
special group linking international museums with established experts and a
new generation of researchers is currently being established.
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