Orientalist chandelier, France, Circa 1870 Gilt...

Orientalist chandelier, France, Circa 1870 Gilt bronze Height: 107 cm; Diameter: 87 cm A rare eighteen-light ormolu and patinated chandelier, finely decorated with stylized oriental motifs in polychrome red and blue cold enamel. Topped by an elegant ceiling light, it features a shaft embellished with interlacing motifs ending in rosettes and linked by chains, alternating with enameled spheres of different diameters, and illuminated by two rows of six and twelve light arms with basins adorned with cut crystal pendants. It terminates in a richly decorated sphere ending in a leafy tip. The term Orientalism appeared around 1830, after the 17th and 18th centuries had already developed the theme of "Turquerie" with great fantasy. This taste for the exotic and the picturesque could be seen in the decoration of the private apartments of Marie-Antoinette and the Comte d'Artois in the late 1780's. But it was really in the 19th century, with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt from 1798 onwards, that the taste for the Orient was established, with its beauty, eroticism and light, but also its fascination for mystery and the quest for an "elsewhere". However, the capture of Algiers by the French in 1830 was truly the birth of the artistic movement, as the term Orientalism was coined at that time. With the development of steam-powered maritime links and rail networks, painters, sculptors, cabinet-makers and ceramists joined the stream of merchants and soldiers heading for undiscovered lands. Riding camels and wearing turbans, French artists made their way to the Maghreb countries and Persia, such as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who drew hundreds of sketches and watercolors in Algiers and Oran in 1832. He would draw inspiration from these for many years to come. Other artists, such as Decamps, Fromentin or Gérôme, Lamartine, Nerval or Gautier, all driven by the desire to discover another civilization, or even to adopt the way of life "over there", went to these lands bathed in light and dryness. The English, for their part, focused their attention on Egypt and Palestine. In Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Italy, other European artists set sail in their turn. As a result of these travels, European Fine Arts experienced a tremendous explosion of new themes: the despotism of the tyrant, the sensuality and opulence of the harem, the picturesque colorful street scenes, the riches of people and landscapes. In France, it was under the Second Empire that Orientalists came to the fore. Emperor Napoleon III, aristocrats and wealthy bourgeois in search of the exotic filled the commission books of the most renowned artists. It was not the predominantly academic style of the Orientalists that counted, but the exoticism they presented to a fascinated public; such as the sculptor Charles Cordier (1827-1905), who innovated by using the polychromy of Algerian marble and onyx, or Émile Guillemin (1841-1907), whose works were published by the foundryman Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-1892). These artists also led scientific missions to the Orient, with the aim of contributing to the cataloguing of the cultures of a multi-ethnic civilization. This documentary and naturalistic approach reveals a political and cultural desire to keep track of these anthropological and geographical testimonies.