Pierre Gouthière

During his brilliant career he executed a vast quantity of metal work of the utmost variety, the best of which was unsurpassed by any of his rivals in that great art period.

It was long believed that he received many commissions for furniture from the court of Louis XVI, and especially from Marie Antoinette, but recent searches suggest that his work for the queen was confined to bronzes.

Indeed, the custom of the beautiful mistress of Louis XV brought about the financial ruin of the great artist, who accomplished more than any other man for the fame of her château of Louveciennes.

When the collection of the duc d'Aumont was sold by auction in Paris in 1782 so many objects niounted by Gouthière were bought for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that it is not difficult to perceive the basis of the belief that they were actually made for the court.

The duc d'Aumont's cabinet represented the high-water mark of the chasers art, and the great prices which were paid for Gouthière's work at this sale are the most conclusive criterion of the value set upon his achievement in his own day.

The mounts of gilt bronze, cast and elaborately chased, show satyr's heads, from which hang festoons of vine leaves, while within the feet a serpent is coiled to spring.

There too is a bronze clock, signed by Gouthière, cizileur et doreur du Roy a Paris, dated 1771, with a river god, a water nymph symbolizing the Rhne and its tributary the Durance, and a female figure typifying the city of Avignon.

Perfume burner by Gouthiere, circa 1774–1775. Red jasper and gilded bronze.
Installed by Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt : The large and unique marble stove decorated with gilt bronzes made by Pierre Gouthière in the vestibule of the Hôtel de Besenval , formerly placed in the Grand cabinet , now the dining room. Photographed just before World War I . Only a few years later it was dismantled and sold. In the late 1990s the stove was with the Galerie Kraemer of Paris. The gallery later sold it to a client in the United States for FRF 4,500,000 (then ~USD800,000). [ 1 ] [ 2 ]