A very fine pair Louis XVI patinated bronze decorative oil lamps attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire after a model by Simon-Louis Boizot featuring the figure of L’Étude in classical dress wearing her long hair gathered in a coil and seated reading from an open book on her lap, upon an Antique oil lamp with flaming finial at the spout, with a gadrooned lower body and spreading circular foot on a square base with fluted panels Paris, date circa 1785 Height 37 cm, width 38 cm, depth 13 cm. Literature: Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, “Vergoldete Bronzen”, 1986, p. 294, pl. 4.17.1, illustrating a gilt and patinated bronze candleholder of circa 1790, of very similar design with candle nozzle issuing from the flaming finial, noting that the model was after Simon-Louis Boizot. And pl. 4.17.3, illustrating a gilt and patinated bronze chenet of circa 1790 in the Grand Trianon, Versailles, featuring the same female figure of L’Étude seated on an Antique daybed. And pl. 4.17.4, illustrating a portrait of Empress Elizabeth Alexejevna by Jean-Laurent Mosnier, which shows an almost identical L’Étude oil lamp placed on a ledge beside the sitter. And p. 298, pl. 4.18.6, illustrating a pen and ink and wash design from the workshop of Pierre-Philippe Thomire of circa 1785 in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, showing two alternative designs for a number of decorative objects for a chimneypiece including a design for a very similar L’Étude oil lamp placed upon the mantelpiece. The J. P. Getty Museum, California owns an almost identical L’Étude oil lamp as well as its companion featuring Philosophy, which are dated to circa 1785 and attributed to the renowned fondeur-ciseleur Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843) after the model by Simon-Louis Boizot (1743-1809). Like the present piece they were made purely as decorative objects and were not intended to be functional, although models of a similar design were in fact adapted to act as candle holders (as illustrated in Ottomeyer, op. cit. p. 294, pl. 4.17.1). The classical female figure, which represents an allegory of study or learning, was originally modelled by the sculptor Boizot in 1780, who sold it and its companion representing Philosophy to the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, who produced them in white biscuit up until 1786. Boizot had been appointed artistic director of sculpture at Sèvres in 1773 and during his career there oversaw the design of more than 150 of his models reproduced in unglazed porcelain, including official portrait busts of Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette. Like Boizot, Thomire also worked at Sèvres, firstly as an assistant to its artistic director Jean-Claude Duplessis in making the factory’s mounts. Following the latter’s death in 1783, Thomire took over Duplessis’s job and in this capacity supplied all the gilt bronze mounts for the factory’s porcelain. As the Getty cataloguing notes, it was probably because of his close working relationship with Boizot, that Thomire could have obtained Boizot’s model for this figurine and its companion. The figures of L’Étude and La Philosophie became eminently fashionable and were not only reproduced by Sèvres and as individual figurines but also appeared on a series of clock cases by François Rémond (1747-1812). Rémond’s watercolour design of 1785 shows the two figures seated either side of the clock drum, which in turn is surmounted by an eagle (illustrated in Ottomeyer and Pröschel, op. cit. p. 295, pl. 4.17.5). Rémond’s design arose from a commission by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre, who in 1788 supplied two clocks of that model to Louis XVI at Saint-Cloud. In addition to Saint-Cloud other clocks of the same design can be seen in the British Royal Collection and the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg.