Installed 1673 at Versailles by Louis XIV, King of France [1638-1715]; dismantled by 1756.[1] (sale, Hôtel Drouot, salle no. 10, Paris, 29 December 1930, no. 86 [a pair with NGA 1940.1.16]).[2] (Paul Gouvert, Paris);[3] purchased 1940 through (Arnold Seligman, Rey & Co., New York) by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh, for NGA. [1] Blondel, Jacques-François. _Architecture françoise, ou, Recueil des plans, elevations, coupes et profils des e´glises, maisons royales, palais, hôtels & edifices les plus considerables de Paris_. 8 vols. Paris, 1752-1756. Reprint as _L’architecture français, dite Le très grand Blondel_. 8 vols. Paris, 2009: 4:108, 111. [2] According to the catalogue of the 1937 exhibition in Paris in which the sculpture appeared with NGA 1940.1.16, this work was in a Paris sale of 29 December 1930 of the collection of the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. There were at least two sales at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on that date: one in room 6 was the sale of a "Madame X..." but it did not include any sculpture; the other, in room 10, offered objects from unidentified consignors and included as lot number 86 "Deux groupes en plomb provenant vraisemblablement de deux fontaines qui se trouvaient dans l'ancien théâtre d'eau de Versailles, aujourd'hui disparu." (Julia Armstrong, then at the Getty Provenance Index, identified the sale in room 10, matched the NGA pair to lot 86, and kindly provided a copy of the sale catalogue; see her letter of 20 June 1990 to Alison Luchs, in NGA curatorial files.) If the "Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia" was a consignor to the sale in room 10, her identity is uncertain. She was not the famed Anastasia whose 1918 death is disputed, but was a cousin, possibly Anastasia Mihailovna (1860-1923), who married Grand-Duke Frederick Francis III of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, or Anastasia Nicolaevna of Montenegro (1867-1935), who married Grand-Duke Nicholas of Russia. Of the two, the latter is the more probable candidate because her husband died in 1929, which may have occasioned the sale of works in their collection, and both she and her husband died in Cape d'Antibes, so the sale would probably have been in France. There is currently no indication that the sale in which the NGA fountains figured as no. 86 was associated with either Anastasia, although it is possible this association is with the other sale on the same date, that of “Madame X.” [3] Gouvert lent the fountain, along with NGA 1940.1.16, to exhibitions in Paris (1937) and New York (1939).