THE DESIGN

The design for these Egyptian-style gilt bronze wine coolers can be attributed to the French-born artist Jean-Jacques Boileau, a mural painter, who came to England to assist the architect Henry Holland in the decoration of the Prince of Wales's Carlton House.

Boileau's drawing in the Victoria and Albert Museum for a wine cooler in the Egyptian manner which features identical sphinx supports and similar serpent handles is clearly the inspiration for these objects (fig. 1). The drawing is one of a portfolio of seventy-eight designs for silver by this artist now at the V&A, amongst which are two signed and dated 1800 and 1802 respectively (Snodin op. cit., p. 125). This collects ion was once owned by A.C.Pugin (described in his sale catalogue in 1833), with whom Boileau worked at the Windsor Castle renovations. Boileau was part of the milieu working for the Prince of Wales at Carlton House and was probably introduced to England by Henry Holland in 1787 to help with this project. Other sheets in the portfolio which feature identically modelled serpents and lion paws further strengthen this attribution.

Inspired by Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and by Vivant Denon's publication Voyages dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte of 1802 (translated as Travels in Egypt in 1803), the Graeco-Egyptian ‘French Empire’ style become popular in the erudite circles of London. It features prominently in the designs of Thomas Hope for his collects ion, the projects of the Prince of Wales, and the products retailed by the royally-appointed goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge & Rundell. With the help of artists like Jean-Jacques Boileau and Charles Heathcote Tatham, the firm drew on a repertoire of designs for their creations executed by the workshops of renowned silversmiths Paul Storr, Digby Scott and Benjamin Smith.

The most famous example of plate in the Egyptian style is the extensive group Rundell, Bridge & Rundell sold in 1811 to the Prince of Wales – by now the Prince Regent – known as the ‘Grand Service’. This huge commission naturally contained pieces that pre-date Rundell’s invoice by some years. An example by Storr sharing elements of the present coolers’ stylistic vocabulary is the set of four silver-gilt tureens hallmarked 1802-1804 (RCIN 51695, exhibited London, The Queen's Gallery, Carlton House, The Past Glories of George IV's Palace, 1991-1992, no. 85). The upper section of Boileau design and in particular the frieze and snake handles also correspond to those of a set of four silver-gilt examples marked by Storr in the collects ion of the Dukes of Bedford at Woburn Abbey which bear the London hallmark for 1803/4 (Snodin op. cit., p. 130, no. 12).

Silver-gilt coolers by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell which more fully correspond to Boileau’s design by incorporating the sphinx supports are hallmarked slightly later and include:

A pair adaptable via detachable liners as fruit coolers, hallmarked London, 1805-06 with marks of Digby Scott and Benjamin Smith, formerly in the Alan and Simone Hartman collects ion of Regency Silver sold Christie's New York, 20 October 1999, lot 184 (reproduced in Hartop op. cit., no. 11). The present set’s later removable liners enable their use as fruit baskets much in the same way. A crested but otherwise identical set of four, hallmarked London 1805 with marks of Digby Scott and Benjamin Smith, which were commissioned by Thomas Foley, 3rd Baron Foley (1780-1833), and sold Christie’s London, 7 July 2011, lot 8.

Rundells also supplied gilt bronze versions of their silver model identical to this set of four:

A pair retaining their original liners appeared in the sale of the 1st Viscount Bridport, great nephew of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (Christie's London, 12 July 1895, lot 113). The catalogue entry is unclear as to whether these coolers originally belonged to Nelson but a stylistic dating strongly suggests the possibility. The pair was later sold by the Trustees of The Late H. T. S. Upcher, Christie's, Sheringham Hall, Upper Sheringham, Norfolk, 22-23 October 1986, lot 106. A set of four from the Marcos collects ion sold on behalf of the Republic of the Philippines through the Presidential Commission for Good Government, Christie's New York, 10 January 1991, lot 53. A pair with the London dealer Harris Lindsay in 2005. A single example with its original liner belonging to Danny Katz sold Replica Shoes ’s London, 12 November 2013, lot 261.

ATTRIBUTION TO DECAIX

In terms of style and technique these coolers relate strongly to a distinguished corpus of Egyptian-inspired candelabra which circumstantial evidence links to manufacture for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell by the gilt bronze maker, Alexis Decaix – like Boileau a French émigré.

Four of these candelabra were sold to the Prince Regent in 1811 as part of the Grand Service (RCIN 26108) but earlier examples exist, such as the set of four commissioned circa 1802-1806 for the Egyptian Dining Room at Goodwood House, Sussex, seat of the Dukes of Richmond. Two of these were sold Replica Shoes ’s London, 6 July 2016, lot 41 where they were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Hartop, op. cit., no. 87; fig. 2).

As elaborated in the Replica Shoes ’s lot description, a silent partnership had existed between Decaix and Rundell, Bridge & Rundell whose dissolution in January 1809 was gazetted. The dating of the Goodwood candelabra suggests that this partnership was in operation throughout most of the first decade of the 19th Century. Decaix’s professional reputation was then at its height, his work having been praised in 1807 by no less a judge than Thomas Hope.

The polymath designer-collects or’s celebrated interiors at Duchess Street, London are known to have featured gilt bronze objects fashioned by Decaix. In the introduction to his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, Hope singles out Decaix as the only bronze worker in London “to whose industry and talent I could in some measure confide the execution of the more enriched portion of my designs” (p. 10).

Close parallels can be drawn between certain elements of these candelabra and the current wine coolers. The coolers’ central swan motif is sharply moulded in a manner just like the winged solar discs that decorate the lintels resting on the candelabra’s standing figures (both ultimately deriving from Denon’s plates. The sphinx’s wings meanwhile are remarkably alike. In both cases, castings take curvilinear, double-outlined forms divided neatly into sections of proximate size and number; and the chasing of the sections nearest the sphinx’s heads emulates soft feathering. These striking stylistic similarities, Decaix’s reputation as the preeminent craftsman working in gilt bronze at the turn of the century and his documented ties to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell all support an attribution to him for these wine coolers.

CAPTAIN SIR WILLIAM HOSTE (1780-1828)

Amongst the finest of Horatio Nelson’s protégés, William Hoste (fig. 3) shared many of his characteristics. Son of a Norfolk rector, short of stature and weak of constitution but immeasurably brave, he entered the Royal Navy at the same age through similar acts of preferment and rose just as rapidly. Taken under Nelson’s wing as a twelve-year old servant on the Agamemnon, Hoste played supporting – and later leading – roles in several of the best-known chapters of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the unprecedented boarding of not one but two Spanish men-of-war at the Battle of St Vincent in 1797, he was by Nelson’s side. The following year he served as lieutenant on HMS Theseus at the Battle of the Nile and even though not yet eighteen was promoted afterwards to acting captain and given the prestigious job of delivering news of the great victory to the Neapolitan court. There, he was feted by Queen Maria Carolina, who presented him with a diamond ring and the British ambassador William Hamilton’s celebrity wife Emma, remarked that he was a “second Nelson” and took him in her carriage to parade the Naples streets (Pocock, op. cit., pp. 82-83). As captain of the brig Mutine, Hoste remained with Nelson in the Mediterranean for the next two years calling his commander his ‘second father’. With Nelson, Hoste assisted in the restoration of the King of Naples after the 1798 Jacobin revolt—when the royal family and their treasure were evacuated by the Royal Navy to Sicily— and then at the French surrender of Rome in 1799. For their services to the Neapolitan royal family, Nelson and his fellow officers were showered with decorations and luxurious presents.

Continually denied a period of leave by the events unfolding around him, the strain of an entire decade at sea took its toll. Hoste fell ill with malaria in Alexandria, forcing a period of convalescence and sight-seeing in Athens in 1801 as a guest of Lord and Lady Elgin, at the very moment that their scaffolding was being put around the Parthenon marbles. He began an education in classical antiquity in these favourable surroundings, completed in Florence following his appointment to the frigate HMS Greyhound as his ship cruised the Italian coast.

Prior to being invalided home in 1814, Hoste’s one extended period of wart.mes shore leave was granted him in 1803-1804, years in which this wine cooler model may first have been produced based on the availability of Boileau’s design. Certainly objects in this style would have appealed strongly to a by now highly cultured man, who had served with distinction in Egyptian waters and travelled widely around the Mediterranean. When in London he likely would have visited Rundell, Bridge & Rundell’s premises at the sign of the Golden Salmon, no. 32 Ludgate Hill in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, where he would have seen an extraordinary array of silver, gold, gilt bronze and jewellery which the firm supplied to royal and aristocratic patrons of the day. The discovery of matching wine coolers—with Egyptian motifs obviously linked to the battle of the Nile—among the collects ions of both Nelson and Hoste, neither rich men or known as collects ors, suggest they may either have formed part of a royal gift or that they were subsequently acquired or presented as commemorative of the battle, possibly for the self-proclaimed ‘Egyptian Club’ of officers who had served at the action.

Having so precociously attained a captaincy during a period of intense conflict, Hoste was able to rapidly accumulate prize money. In January 1800 (when still not twenty) he wrote his father to put “to any purpose he thinks proper” the “£800 or £1000” from the capture of two French grain ships, on top of another £1,000 “remit[ed] to my agent, some few months back” (Pocock, op. cit., p. 97). Unfortunately, the Hoste papers at the National Marit.mes Museum lack any detailed records of his expenditure prior to the 1820s, by which t.mes purchase of these coolers can be discounted on stylistic grounds. These later documents do though illustrate considerable wealth, which his modern biographer estimates rose to around £50,000, largely the accumulation of prize money secured during an extraordinarily lucrative naval career (Pocock, op. cit., p. 240).

HOSTE-FORTESCUE DESCENT

Hoste’s eldest son, Sir William Legge George Hoste, 2nd Baronet (1818-1868) was born in Rome during his parents’ post-war Grand Tour. Following in his father’s footsteps, the younger William served the Royal Navy successfully throughout the decades of peace that followed. A captain by the age of thirty, he was eventually awarded a rear-admiralty in 1866.

Rear-Admiral Hoste’s daughter Dorothy Augusta married into the Fortescue family in 1891, a year after her new husband had inherited Dropmore House. This Buckinghamshire mansion was originally built by Samuel Wyatt in 1792 for Lord Grenville, one-t.mes Prime Minister to George III. These wine coolers are first indisputably at Dropmore in an unpublished photograph taken prior to WWI in the possession of the current owners (fig. 4). They have been handed down by several generations of the Fortescue family as part of a collects ion of Hoste memorabilia which includes his sword and a small original oil portrait.