Lot Essay
Founded in 1766 with the permission of Catherine the Great, the Gardner Factory in Verbilki, Moscow region, was one of the first porcelain factories in Russia, together with the Imperial Porcelain Factory founded two decades earlier. The present pair of vases is a wonderful example of the early 19th century Gardner Factory production.
Many of the vases produced at this time were decorated with copies of Old Master and landscape paintings from Russian museums or with prints. Consistent with the European tradition of using academic paintings as porcelain design sources, the middle section of the vase was treated by factory artists as a canvas.
A comparable pair of vases by the Gardner Porcelain Factory depicting the same Dutch genre scenes is part of the collection of the State Peterhof Museum, St Petersburg; see M. Korablev, M. Sokolenko, Antologiia Russkogo Farfora XVIII-nachala XX veka, vol. 5, part 1, Moscow, 2014, pp. 100-105.
Many of the vases produced at this time were decorated with copies of Old Master and landscape paintings from Russian museums or with prints. Consistent with the European tradition of using academic paintings as porcelain design sources, the middle section of the vase was treated by factory artists as a canvas.
A comparable pair of vases by the Gardner Porcelain Factory depicting the same Dutch genre scenes is part of the collection of the State Peterhof Museum, St Petersburg; see M. Korablev, M. Sokolenko, Antologiia Russkogo Farfora XVIII-nachala XX veka, vol. 5, part 1, Moscow, 2014, pp. 100-105.