A VINCENNES QUATREFOIL TWO-HANDLED ECUELLE, COVER AND STAND (écuelle ovale à quatre pans ronds et plateau à ornements), the cover with green and gilt fish finial resting on a leek, two shells in pink and iron-red and a mushroom, each painted with vignettes of birds and wildfowl among flowering plants, reeds, trees and moths within relief-moulded gilt fruiting-vine and scrolls, the rim to the cover with a gilt band entwined with pink ribbon, the écuelle with entwined double-branch handles enriched in puce and gilt and with moulded gilt flowers and foliage, the interior with a bird standing on a brown mound flanked by two trees with a bird in flight above, beneath a gilt fruiting-vine border, the stand similarly decorated and with birds in flight, within a scroll-moulded rim and handles enriched in puce and gilt (the cover with minute chip to mushroom, part of gilt band rubbed and slight rubbing to gilding on vine, the écuelle with six slight rim chips, rubbing to interior gilt rim and well, slight rubbing to handles and gilt footrim, the stand with two rim chips to underside and end of one scroll handle lacking, two chips to rim of well and two slight chips to one handle), elaborate blue interlaced L marks to écuelle and stand below an unidentified painter's mark of a fleur-de-lys, circa 1752The stand 11 3/4 ins. (30cm.) wide

A VINCENNES QUATREFOIL TWO-HANDLED ECUELLE, COVER AND STAND (écuelle ovale à quatre pans ronds et plateau à ornements), the cover with green and gilt fish finial resting on a leek, two shells in pink and iron-red and a mushroom, each painted with vignettes of birds and wildfowl among flowering plants, reeds, trees and moths within relief-moulded gilt fruiting-vine and scrolls, the rim to the cover with a gilt band entwined with pink ribbon, the écuelle with entwined double-branch handles enriched in puce and gilt and with moulded gilt flowers and foliage, the interior with a bird standing on a brown mound flanked by two trees with a bird in flight above, beneath a gilt fruiting-vine border, the stand similarly decorated and with birds in flight, within a scroll-moulded rim and handles enriched in puce and gilt (the cover with minute chip to mushroom, part of gilt band rubbed and slight rubbing to gilding on vine, the écuelle with six slight rim chips, rubbing to interior gilt rim and well, slight rubbing to handles and gilt footrim, the stand with two rim chips to underside and end of one scroll handle lacking, two chips to rim of well and two slight chips to one handle), elaborate blue interlaced L marks to écuelle and stand below an unidentified painter's mark of a fleur-de-lys, circa 1752 The stand 11 3/4 ins. (30cm.) wide

Details

A VINCENNES QUATREFOIL TWO-HANDLED ECUELLE, COVER AND STAND (écuelle ovale à quatre pans ronds et plateau à ornements), the cover with green and gilt fish finial resting on a leek, two shells in pink and iron-red and a mushroom, each painted with vignettes of birds and wildfowl among flowering plants, reeds, trees and moths within relief-moulded gilt fruiting-vine and scrolls, the rim to the cover with a gilt band entwined with pink ribbon, the écuelle with entwined double-branch handles enriched in puce and gilt and with moulded gilt flowers and foliage, the interior with a bird standing on a brown mound flanked by two trees with a bird in flight above, beneath a gilt fruiting-vine border, the stand similarly decorated and with birds in flight, within a scroll-moulded rim and handles enriched in puce and gilt (the cover with minute chip to mushroom, part of gilt band rubbed and slight rubbing to gilding on vine, the écuelle with six slight rim chips, rubbing to interior gilt rim and well, slight rubbing to handles and gilt footrim, the stand with two rim chips to underside and end of one scroll handle lacking, two chips to rim of well and two slight chips to one handle), elaborate blue interlaced L marks to écuelle and stand below an unidentified painter's mark of a fleur-de-lys, circa 1752
The stand 11 3/4 ins. (30cm.) wide

Provenance

Reputedly given by Louis XV to Madame de Pompadour
Probably baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911), 23 Avenue Marigny, Paris
Thence by descent to his granddaughter Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley

Lot Essay

This form, almost certainly designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis and produced at Vincennes in the early 1750's, was particularly popular in 1752. A similar example, painted with flowers and without the vine moulding in relief, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris and illustrated by T. Préaud and A. d'Albis, La Porcelaine de Vincennes, Paris, 1991, p. 147, no. 105, and another painted with birds perhaps by the same hand, but with less elaborate decoration and again without the vine moulding in relief, is in the David Collection (S. Eriksen, The David Collection, French Porcelain, Copenhagen, 1980, no. 25). Cf. A. Dawson, French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 1994, pp. 82-83, no. 77 for a Vincennes cup and saucer (gobelet à la Reine) painted with birds, perhaps by the same unidentified hand

Ecuelles were used for bouillon or soup drunk in the boudoir or bedroom during the lengthy process of the toilette. The present example with the fish finial was perhaps used for fish bouillon taken on Fridays or Holy days when it was not permitted to eat meat

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