Getty Museum

Pair of Wall Lights

Creator

French Designer · 1765–1785

Artist

Despite numerous commissions from the crowned heads of Europe, accomplished designer and bronze chaser Jean-Louis Prieur still died in poverty. His earliest known work, produced around 1766, was a series of designs for furniture, clocks, vases, wall lights and chandeliers for the Polish king's palace in Warsaw. Since Louis XV's wife was a Polish princess, this commission led to work for the French

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Date: about 1775
Medium: Gilt bronze
Culture: French
Department: Decorative Arts
Institution: Getty Museum

Candles, along with firelight, were the only sources of illumination after dark in the 1700s. Wall lights such as these were usually fixed on either side of a mirror so that the reflection multiplied the flames of the candles. These wall lights were modeled to represent flaming torches. The Getty Museum has a drawing of this design; it is thought to be by the same hand, Jean-Louis Prieur. Lights of the same design appear in a watercolor drawing of the grand salon in the Château de Chantilly, the home of the Prince de Condé on the outskirts of Paris. The museum has another group of wall lights of this design (see [77.DF.29](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/5608/attributed-to-jean-louis-prieur-two-pairs-of-wall-lights-french-about-1775/)).

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