THE FIGURES CIRCA 1740, ONE WITH PAINTED BROWN .D.V. MARK, THE FRENCH FLOWERS 18TH CENTURY, THE ORMOLU CIRCA 1745-49

This pair of candelabra present extremely rare ‘magot’ figures made at François Barbin’s early porcelain factory which was set up under the protection of Louis François Anne de Neufville (1695-1766), duc de Villeroy in about 1735-36. The duke, who was captain of the king’s guard and a Marshal of France, installed Barbin’s small concern in the outbuildings of his château at Villeroy.¹ There are few pieces which are firmly attributable to this early manufactory rather than the larger manufactory which Barbin opened nearby at Mennecy in 1748 after the closure of his smaller factory at Château de Villeroy.² Villeroy pieces are very close to those made at Chantilly in decoration, type and the distinctive tin-glaze.³ The Louis XV ormolu mounts on the present lot, which were made specifically to fit these figures, bear crowned C marks indicating that they are datable to 1745-1749, providing a terminus ante quem for the Villeroy porcelain figures.

A pair of related figures (one with an incised D.V. mark) were sold in the M. Fitzhenry collection sale at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, on 13-16 December 1909, lot 137. These unmounted figures had poses which symmetrically mirror the poses of the present figures (the raised arm on one of the 1909 figures is on the left, rather than on the right as it is on the present corresponding figure). A very similar Chantilly figure (also with the right arm raised, similar to one of the present figures) was formerly in the Pflueger Collection and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.⁴ It is very possible that Villeroy used a Chantilly figure as a prototype, or that the Chantilly and Villeroy figures share a prototype. Precedents for a different Villeroy seated pagoda figure⁵ were made at Meissen⁶ and China,⁷ and it is unclear if the Villeroy figure was copied from a Meissen or a Chinese original. Another pair of smaller twin-branch candelabra mounted with Villeroy porcelain seated figures was sold at Christie’s, Paris, 17 April 2012.

These precious porcelain figures were undoubtedly mounted as candelabra by a marchand-mercier such as Lazare-Duvaux. His livre-journal covering the years 1748-58 records several pairs of candelabra of this type delivered to Madame de Pompadour including one sold on the 17th of December 1752: 1295- Mme la marquise de Pompadour: Une paire de girandoles dorées d’or moulu sur des magots de porcelaine grise, les fleurs de Vincennes, 250 L.

1. It appears that there were only approximately fifteen employees (excluding Barbin’s two sons) of which only three were full time (Nicolas Meunier, a painter, Joseph Huet, a sculptor, and Jean-Baptiste Biesse, a compagnon-fayancier).
2. See Aileen Dawson, A Catalogue of French Porcelain in the British Museum, London, 1994, pp.48-49, where she notes a porcelain chinoiserie feeder (in the form of a fish with sharp teeth) in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, which is inscribed with an anchor above DV and Pierre / Bon [?] Ducet and dated 1745, and a tin-glazed earthenware jug which is decorated with the duc de Villeroy’s arms and which bears the painted DV mark and date 1738.
3. Geneviève Le Duc, Porcelaine tendre de Chantilly au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1996, pp. 313-317.
4. This figure is illustrated by Hugo Morley-Fletcher, Early European Porcelain & Faience as collected by Kiyi and Edward Pflueger, London, 1993, Vol. II, pp. 62-63.
5. An unmounted example of this type was also in the Fitzhenry sale, lot 136, where it was described as a Poussah (a fat man), and another example of this form (mounted as a candelabrum) was in The Sydney J. Lamon Collection sold by Christie’s, London, on 29th November 1973, lot 48.
6. The Meissen figure is in the Porzellansammlung, Zwinger, Dresden (PE 7898), and is illustrated by Mathieu Deldicque, Porcelaines de Meissen et de Chantilly, La Fabrique de l’Extravagance, Musée Condé September 2020 – January 2021 Exhibition Catalogue, Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, 2020, p. 141, no. 47, and Ulrich Pietsch and Claudia Banz, Triumph of the Blue Swords, Zwinger 2010 Exhibition Catalogue, Leipzig, 2010, p. 309, cat. no. 330.
7. A pair of Louis XV ormolou-mounted Chinese Kangxi figures of this form mounted as candelabra were sold by Sotheby’s, Monaco, on 15 June 1996, lot 112.