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Lot Essay
'En cette même année [1867], Barbedienne était venu trouver Claudius Popelin et lui avait demandé deux émaux d'allure décorative. C’est le premier essai que le grand bronzier fit de l'émail peint. Popelin composa pour lui deux figures de femmes à la manière italienne: Rome et Venise. Elles furent montées sur la panse de deux grands vases en rouge antique, dont les anses étaient formées de chimères ailées. Constant Sévin en avait fait le modèle.’ (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1893, Tome 10, Period III, pp. 62-63)
These large vases on pedestals are exemplary of a distinctive style unique to Second Empire France when the triumphalism of Napoleon III found expression in a brief flourishing of the neo-Grec style. This was not an ordered neoclassicism, nor the Roman iconography of the First Empire, but a new style for the Second Empire. Driven by a taste for splendour and luxury, it found embellishment in the ornamental motifs of the Estrucan style, such as palmettes and anthemion, and in the sculptural naturalism of the Renaissance.
Louis-Constant Sévin (d. 1892) was head of design at Maison Barbedienne – France’s greatest fondeur ornamentalist. These vases and pedestals are characteristic of his designs for Barbedienne during the 1860s. Compare a monumental Renaissance style mirror designed by Sévin and the sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse shown at the 1867 Paris Exposition universelle, bought by Earl of Dudley and now in the Bowes Museum, Co. Durham (another mirror of the same model sold Christie’s, London, 6 March 2014, lot 10 £218,500).
These vases and pedestals are recorded as dating to 1867 and it is probable that they were also displayed at the Exposition universelle of that year. By the 1880s they are photographed in the Picture Gallery of the John T. Martin house, 28 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, New York. It can be speculated that John T. Martin bought them from the 1867 exposition.
THE PROVENANCE
John T. Martin (1816-1897) was typical of the great class of American art collectors of the 19th century who made their fortunes from railroads, manufacturing and banking and created a ‘Golden Moment’ of American Wealth. Today the period is best evoked by the Gatsbyesque mansions of The Gilded Age.
Martin made his fortune from a clothing contract with the Union Army and from even more lucrative banking and real-estate ventures after the Civil War. His mansion in Brooklyn Heights was built in the 1850s in the Greek Revival style and was published circa 1883-84 in Artistic Houses - a ‘series of Interior Views of a number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States with A Description of the Art Treasures contained therein’. Martin was an enthusiastic art collector whose collection included Going to Work, Dawn of Day by Jean-François Millet, which was lot 96 in the 1909 estate sale (bought by H. S. Henry of Philadelphia for $50,000). Martin’s collection also included La Charrette by Corot and two paintings by Nacisse-Virgile Diaz, from the realist Barbizon school, which show his sophisticated avant-garde taste (A. Lewis et al., The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age, New York, 1987, p.141).
THE ENAMEL
The portrait roundels of ‘La Veneziana Signorile’ and ‘La Romana Bellissima’ fronting the vases are by Claudius Popelin (1825-1892) in the style of the Limousin artists of the Renaissance. Interestingly a cabinet by the ébéniste Auguste-Hyppolyte Sauvrezy in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (OAO 1180), which was shown at the 1867 Paris Exposition universelle, is decorated with very similar enamel portrait roundels by Popelin of women with banners above titled ‘La Benevolenza’ and ‘La Generosita’. Popelin was a French enameller, painter and writer who studied under François-Edouard Picot and Ary Scheffer. He began his career as a history painter, and from 1852 to 1862, he sent paintings based on French and Italian Renaissance subjects to the Salon. From 1860, however, his study of the 16th century inclined him towards the decorative arts, and though initially producing faience, he preferred the delicate technique of painting on enamel, which he learnt from Alfred Meyer (1832–1904).
The portraits here of Roman and Venetian women are exemplary of Popelin's early technique whereby the intense colours, including a violet of his own invention, are enhanced by the sparkle of silver foil. His success resulted in orders from manufacturers, and his enamels were used to decorate furniture, bronzes, silver and gold objects and bookbinding plates. From 1863 he devoted the next 30 years to the art of enamelling. Popelin was an erudite artist, a bibliophile and a poet and was one of the circle of artists who met at the salons of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte. He liked to assemble several enamel plaques together within the same frame to develop a single allegorical or historical theme, see his portrait of Napoleon III (1865; Paris, Musée d’Orsay DO 1983 70) which also includes portraits of Charlemagne, Napoleon I and others. The whereabouts of his masterpiece, Triumph of Truth, measuring 170 x 150 cm. and exhibited at the Salon of 1867 is unknown.
These large vases on pedestals are exemplary of a distinctive style unique to Second Empire France when the triumphalism of Napoleon III found expression in a brief flourishing of the neo-Grec style. This was not an ordered neoclassicism, nor the Roman iconography of the First Empire, but a new style for the Second Empire. Driven by a taste for splendour and luxury, it found embellishment in the ornamental motifs of the Estrucan style, such as palmettes and anthemion, and in the sculptural naturalism of the Renaissance.
Louis-Constant Sévin (d. 1892) was head of design at Maison Barbedienne – France’s greatest fondeur ornamentalist. These vases and pedestals are characteristic of his designs for Barbedienne during the 1860s. Compare a monumental Renaissance style mirror designed by Sévin and the sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse shown at the 1867 Paris Exposition universelle, bought by Earl of Dudley and now in the Bowes Museum, Co. Durham (another mirror of the same model sold Christie’s, London, 6 March 2014, lot 10 £218,500).
These vases and pedestals are recorded as dating to 1867 and it is probable that they were also displayed at the Exposition universelle of that year. By the 1880s they are photographed in the Picture Gallery of the John T. Martin house, 28 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, New York. It can be speculated that John T. Martin bought them from the 1867 exposition.
THE PROVENANCE
John T. Martin (1816-1897) was typical of the great class of American art collectors of the 19th century who made their fortunes from railroads, manufacturing and banking and created a ‘Golden Moment’ of American Wealth. Today the period is best evoked by the Gatsbyesque mansions of The Gilded Age.
Martin made his fortune from a clothing contract with the Union Army and from even more lucrative banking and real-estate ventures after the Civil War. His mansion in Brooklyn Heights was built in the 1850s in the Greek Revival style and was published circa 1883-84 in Artistic Houses - a ‘series of Interior Views of a number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States with A Description of the Art Treasures contained therein’. Martin was an enthusiastic art collector whose collection included Going to Work, Dawn of Day by Jean-François Millet, which was lot 96 in the 1909 estate sale (bought by H. S. Henry of Philadelphia for $50,000). Martin’s collection also included La Charrette by Corot and two paintings by Nacisse-Virgile Diaz, from the realist Barbizon school, which show his sophisticated avant-garde taste (A. Lewis et al., The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age, New York, 1987, p.141).
THE ENAMEL
The portrait roundels of ‘La Veneziana Signorile’ and ‘La Romana Bellissima’ fronting the vases are by Claudius Popelin (1825-1892) in the style of the Limousin artists of the Renaissance. Interestingly a cabinet by the ébéniste Auguste-Hyppolyte Sauvrezy in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (OAO 1180), which was shown at the 1867 Paris Exposition universelle, is decorated with very similar enamel portrait roundels by Popelin of women with banners above titled ‘La Benevolenza’ and ‘La Generosita’. Popelin was a French enameller, painter and writer who studied under François-Edouard Picot and Ary Scheffer. He began his career as a history painter, and from 1852 to 1862, he sent paintings based on French and Italian Renaissance subjects to the Salon. From 1860, however, his study of the 16th century inclined him towards the decorative arts, and though initially producing faience, he preferred the delicate technique of painting on enamel, which he learnt from Alfred Meyer (1832–1904).
The portraits here of Roman and Venetian women are exemplary of Popelin's early technique whereby the intense colours, including a violet of his own invention, are enhanced by the sparkle of silver foil. His success resulted in orders from manufacturers, and his enamels were used to decorate furniture, bronzes, silver and gold objects and bookbinding plates. From 1863 he devoted the next 30 years to the art of enamelling. Popelin was an erudite artist, a bibliophile and a poet and was one of the circle of artists who met at the salons of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte. He liked to assemble several enamel plaques together within the same frame to develop a single allegorical or historical theme, see his portrait of Napoleon III (1865; Paris, Musée d’Orsay DO 1983 70) which also includes portraits of Charlemagne, Napoleon I and others. The whereabouts of his masterpiece, Triumph of Truth, measuring 170 x 150 cm. and exhibited at the Salon of 1867 is unknown.