Rolleston Ltd

A highly important pair of George III ormolu three-light candelabra, designed by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and supplied by Diederich Nicolaus Anderson, each candelabrum with a central foliate nozzle and beaded drip-pan supported by a spiral foliate branch above a foliate urn with Vitruvian-scroll rim and spiral-fluted neck, issuing two foliate branches with nozzles and drip-pans, on a spiral-fluted socle and rosette-guilloche rim, above three reeded and husked S-scroll supports with acanthus clasps forming a tripod on a gadrooned concave-sided triangular plinth.
 
This highly important pair of candelabra was supplied to the 1st Earl Spencer at Spencer House for the Painted Room. The first complete ‘antique’ interior in Europe, these candelabra heralded the dawn of the Neoclassical style in England which would sweep the country and define taste for the next one hundred years. While this pair of candelabra are examples of the finest craftsmanship and design they are also symbols of one of the most important stylistic movements in British art and architecture.
 
James ‘Athenian’ Stuart
Stuart’s design for this pair of candelabra originated in his designs for other tripod-based candelabra and perfume burners for Sir Nathaniel Curzon at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire and the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire. Two sketches by Stuart for the interior decoration of Kedleston, dated 1757-8, found amongst the manuscripts of the Adam brothers, either as Stuart’s originals or as copies made by them or their draughtsmen, contain illustrations of them.
 
Stuart was architect at Spencer House from 1758 and designed these candelabra for the chimneypiece in the Painted Room. An identical pair survive at Hagley Hall, Worcestershire, where he also was employed as interior designer. On his return from Greece in 1755, Stuart and his designs became highly fashionable, and amongst the five hundred subscribers to his book of designs The Antiquities of Athens was Lord Spencer. Responsible for pioneering Neoclassicism in England and proliferating highly popular designs in the Ancient Greek style, for which he gained his epithet ‘Athenian’, Stuart was one of the most important designers of the eighteenth century.
 
Diederich Nicolaus Anderson
Diederich Nicolaus Anderson (d. 1767) was one of the finest metalworkers of his generation, the leading purveyor of objects in ormolu and gilt-bronze before Matthew Boulton began his production at Soho, Birmingham in 1768. Of Dutch origin and active until his death in 1767, Anderson crafted primarily in the Rococo and Neoclassical styles and completed some of the most important commissions of the eighteenth century, amongst them those for the 1st Duke of Northumberland at Syon House and the 4th Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace.