CIRCA 1725-30

This rare and beautiful table fountain is testament to the ingenuity of the marchands-merciers of Paris and the European taste for Japanese porcelain embellished with exquisite ormolu mounts of the highest quality. Decorated with waves and shells, the base forms an apposite support for the magnificent carp with its orange fins and turquoise scales, seemingly about to consume the ripe aquatic leaves decorating the lid of the fountain. Japanese porcelain was exported to Europe as early as the mid-17th century and by the early 18th century a fervour for Japanese objects was established among the choicest circles of French collectors who turned to the marchands-merciers to exuberantly mount these porcelain objects with finely cast and chased gilt-bronze.

Although a number of contemporary ormolu-mounted table fountains using Japanese Arita porcelain exist, the design of these mounts and the type of fish is particularly unusual and rare. Only one closely related example is known, from the collection of Ferdinand or Alice de Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor and currently preserved in the collections there (inv. no. 2677; R.J. Charleston & J. Ayers, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor. Meissen and Oriental Porcelain, 1971, pp. 298-299, ref. 100; A. Lane, 'The Porcelain Collection at Waddesdon', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. 54, 1959, fig. 9). The decoration and chasing to the base and tree branch, the spout, as well as the choice of porcelain appear to be from the same workshop as the present example. Originally conceived to lie flat on its belly, which was initially undecorated, the carp is held up by a beautifully chased tree-branch, its back pierced to issue the fountain’s spout in the form of a dolphin. In a display of the whimsy and creative nous of the marchands-merciers, it is likely that the belly of this fish was decorated at the time of mounting so as not to leave a plain surface visible. Interestingly, the belly of the carp at Waddesdon has been left undecorated and the lid has been replaced.

Clearly an object of great desirability in the 18th century, the coveted nature of this fountain continued into the early 20th century where it was in the collection of Edouard and Valentine Esmond, a couple close to the Rothschild family and related to many of the most successful Jewish families in France. In their apartment at 54 Avenue d'Iéna, the Esmonds were at the heart of Paris’s social elite and network of art patrons and collectors, with the great Maecenas Calouste Gulbenkian as their immediate neighbour and Pierre de Gunzburg residing in an adjacent apartment.