Lot Essay
The present plates are two of 78 included in a service of some 104 pieces known also in the factory's records by the alternate titles service Leguay after the artist responsible for the figure painting or service de dessert sur fond beau bleu figures en brun rehaussées en or sur fond caillouté which translates as a detailed description of the decoration.
The service entered the saleroom on 8 March 1808 and is recorded as having sold minus its two sugar-bowls and four glass coolers at the auction sale held at Versailles between December 1826 and January 1827. The caillouté or pebble-like ground was applied by François Antoine Legros d'Anizy, the gilding by Joseph Léopold Weydinger père and fils, the figures by Pierre-André Leguay (1743-1819) after engravings by Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard retained at Sèvres.
Examples from the service are in the collections of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (a plate and a footed bowl); the British Museum, London (a plate); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (a plate); and the Marton Museum, Samobor, Croatia (a sugar-bowl, cover and stand and a saucer dish). Three other plates are known to have been on the British art market between 1987 and 1990. The present plates may be two of these or may be two further examples.
For detailed descriptions of these holdings and further background information on the service, see Tamara Préaud, The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Alexandre Brogniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry, 1800-1847, Exhibition Catalogue, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, 1998, p. 337, cat. nos. 133a and 133b; Aileen Dawson, French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 1994, cat. no. 179; and Antoine d'Albis, Andreina d'Agliano, et al., European Porcelain from the Marton Museum Collection, Exhibition Catalogue, 2008, cat nos. 66 and 67 respectively.
The service entered the saleroom on 8 March 1808 and is recorded as having sold minus its two sugar-bowls and four glass coolers at the auction sale held at Versailles between December 1826 and January 1827. The caillouté or pebble-like ground was applied by François Antoine Legros d'Anizy, the gilding by Joseph Léopold Weydinger père and fils, the figures by Pierre-André Leguay (1743-1819) after engravings by Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard retained at Sèvres.
Examples from the service are in the collections of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (a plate and a footed bowl); the British Museum, London (a plate); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (a plate); and the Marton Museum, Samobor, Croatia (a sugar-bowl, cover and stand and a saucer dish). Three other plates are known to have been on the British art market between 1987 and 1990. The present plates may be two of these or may be two further examples.
For detailed descriptions of these holdings and further background information on the service, see Tamara Préaud, The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Alexandre Brogniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry, 1800-1847, Exhibition Catalogue, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, 1998, p. 337, cat. nos. 133a and 133b; Aileen Dawson, French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 1994, cat. no. 179; and Antoine d'Albis, Andreina d'Agliano, et al., European Porcelain from the Marton Museum Collection, Exhibition Catalogue, 2008, cat nos. 66 and 67 respectively.