ATTRIBUTED TO JEAN-JOSEPH BAUMANN, CIRCA 1805

With its striking waterfall or 'grotto' frieze and unusual water nymph handles, this impressive brule-parfum is a tour de force of early 19th century Russian bronze. These distinctive motives, and the combination of so many ornamental elements, which create a particularly rich surface decoration, identify it as an object aimed at the Russian market and, in this case, also made in Russia. The brule-parfum belongs to a group of closely related Russian vases that were strongly influenced by the work of the French bronzier Claude Galle (1759-1815). However, due to the Russian embargo on French gilt-bronzes and clocks, Russian workshops not only had to come up with their own designs but also produce metalwork that would satisfy a clientele used to the high quality of Parisian production.

A closely related pair of Medici-form vases, attributed to the St. Petersburg workshop of Ivan (Jean-Joseph) Baumann, is in The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg (illustrated I. Sychev, Russian Bronze, Moscow, 2003, pp. 102-103). Baumann is first recorded in 1801 where he set up a workshop in St. Petersburg. In 1803 he purchased the workshop of the deceased bronzier I.-K. Mensel at 124 Malay Morskaya Street, in the house of Mrs. Matiushkin. He is also known to have produced furniture, and by 1845 he had doubled the size of his workforce. A further closely related pair, attributed to the celebrated St. Petersburg bronzier Friedrich Bergenfeldt (1768-1822), originates from an 1802 drawing by architect Andrej Voronikin (1760-1814). A vase signed by Bergenfeldt, and the basis upon which other vases in the group are attributed, was sold at Christie's New York, 26 October 2001, lot 298. The others include a pair recorded in the collections of the Hermitage in the first half of the 19th century; another pair, possibly the latter, exhibited by Ariane Dandois in L'Empire à Travers l'Europe, exh. cat., Paris, 2000, no. 22; a pair formerly in the collections of the counts Bobrinski (illustrated in I. Sytchev, 'Friedrich Bergenfeldt, an Unknown Russian Bronzier', Russian Jeweler, No. 1, 1998, p. 31); and a pair in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence (see M. Chiarini and S. Padovani, Gli Appartamenti Reali di Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1993, p. 229, fig. II.36).

Previously in a private Danish collection, the present brule-parfum reputedly left Russia through Empress Maria Feodorovna (26 November 1847 – 13 October 1928), the Danish-born spouse of Tsar Alexander III. Known before her marriage as Princess Dagmar of Denmark, she begrudgingly left Russia two years after the overthrow her son, Tsar Nicholas II, in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution. After living briefly in England with her sister, Queen Alexandra, and then in Copenhagen with her nephew King Christian X, at Amalienborg Palace, she established herself permanently at her holiday villa of Hvidøre, where a large community of Russian émigrés soon flourished. Following her death, property from the dowager Empress' estate was auctioned on April 9 1929 in Klmpenborg, near Copenhagen. The auction catalogue mentions several gilt vases decorated with garlands (lot 253), such as the lot here offered, yet it is impossible to establish a firm provenance given the vague nature of these records. It could therefore have also come from one of the many other Russian families that made Denmark their new home following the revolutionary tumult.
A closely related pair of vases, of the same model but of smaller size, and conceived without a cover or square plinth, sold at Sotheby's, New York, 18 November 2011, lot 159.