Offered by Franck Baptiste Paris
Extremely rare decoration composed of three flower bowls in soft paste porcelain from the Sévres factory.
Oblong shaped model called Verdun bowl or Roussel bowl*.
Very beautiful decor, the white background decorated with a seedling of roses gridded by a trellis of gold laurel leaves.
The two side bowls of the third size are decorated on both sides, the central bowl of the second size presents a polychrome floral bouquet at the rear.
The handles simulate foliage whose borders are enhanced with gold.
The bowl of the second size marked with two intertwined Ls, the date letter P for 1768 and the mark of the painter Antoine Toussaint Cornailles.
The side bowls signed with two intertwined Ls, one with the date letter Q for 1769, the other with the mark of the painter Nicolas Catrice.
The archives of the Sèvres factory tell us that Nicolas Catrice received an extraordinary payment in 1769 for the painting "in detached rozes" on a Roussel bowl of the second size and two of the third size (Arch. Sèvres, Travaux Extraordinaires, F11, 1769).
The other bowl of the second size painted by Catrice is today kept at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris under the inventory number D. 36963.
It probably originally formed a single set of four bowls.
Very good state of conservation, small gold wear on the threads of the borders, a cooking crack on the reverse of the large bowl.
Dimensions:
The two side bowls: Height: 11.5 cm; Width: 24cm; Depth: 11cm
The central bowl: Height: 13 cm; Width: 26cm; Depth: 13 cm
Origin :
Collection of Prince Anatole Demidoff (1812-1870) in his San Donato palace in Florence.
His sale, Me Charles Pillet, Paris, March 23, 1870, lot 156. (illustrated in the catalog)
Private collection Paris.
Bibliography:
Article by Guillaume Séret “A new flower bowl joins the collection of Sèvres porcelain kept at the Louvre Museum”, page 87/88 of the magazine
of the Society of Friends of the National Ceramic Museum, 2014.
* The shape of the flower bowls was designated by the terms "Verdun or Roussel" in homage to the farmer generals, Jean François Verdun de Monchiroux and Jacques-Jérémie Roussel de la Celle (1712-1776) who in turn administered the factory.
Our opinion :
As the article cited above indicates, our garnish is of the greatest rarity, since the only other garnish of this type known to date is kept in the Louvre Museum.
The size of the pieces and the extreme quality of the painted and gilded decoration direct us towards a very prestigious order.
We know, for example, from the revolutionary inventories of 1791 and 1792 that several flower bowls decorated with landscapes were found at the Palace of Versailles.
Our pieces which decorated the magnificent San Donato Palace in Florence in the mid-19th century, certainly come from Princess Mathilde Bonaparte who married Count Anatole Demidoff in 1840.
The latter, who was Napoleon's niece, richly decorated her interior with leading French pieces, a large part of which came from national collections and followed the imperial family in its exile.
The finesse of the decoration and the purity of the shape of our bowls perfectly represent all the preciousness and refinement of the 18th century French.
The temperance of rocaille with a return to symmetry and the sensitivity of floral decoration now influenced by women like Madame de Pompadour or later Marie Antoinette, marks in our eyes the apogee of the Louis XV style.
