.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Etienne-Henri Le Guay, recorded at Vincennes and Sèvres as a painter of friezes and as a gilder 1748-1749, 1751-1796. Gifted as a gilder, he was one of a small number of artists able to execute the intricate work in gold, and platinum conceived in imitation of Japanese lacquer and found only on hard paste wares and vases made by Sèvres for a few short years in the early 1790's. The black ground on which the chinoiseries were applied is actually a very dark blue, as evident on the present example in areas where the ground color was applied very thinly.
According to Tamara Préaud and Marcelle Brunet in Sèvres, des origines à nos jours, Paris, 1978, p. 224, nos. 300-301, the first of a series of services with this new style of decoration, described as fond noir Chinois en or de couleurs et platine was delivered on 6 May 1791 to A.M. de Semonville Ambassadeur. Plates were priced at 45 livres each. Two years later, the cost of a plate had risen by over 20 percent to 54 livres each. See Adrian Sasoon, Vincennes and Sèvres Porcelain, Catalogue of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, 1991, pp. 152-156 for a discussion of this type of decoration and of the artists with whom it is associated.
According to Tamara Préaud and Marcelle Brunet in Sèvres, des origines à nos jours, Paris, 1978, p. 224, nos. 300-301, the first of a series of services with this new style of decoration, described as fond noir Chinois en or de couleurs et platine was delivered on 6 May 1791 to A.M. de Semonville Ambassadeur. Plates were priced at 45 livres each. Two years later, the cost of a plate had risen by over 20 percent to 54 livres each. See Adrian Sasoon, Vincennes and Sèvres Porcelain, Catalogue of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, 1991, pp. 152-156 for a discussion of this type of decoration and of the artists with whom it is associated.