1771, BLUE INTERLACED L MARK ENCLOSING DATE LETTER S TO BOTH, ONE WITH PAINTER'S THREE DOTS MARK FOR JEAN-BAPTISTE TANDART AND INCISED G R, THE OTHER WITH INDISTINCT PAINTER'S MARK AND INCISED R

These Sèvres seaux are from the service acquired by Jeanne (Bécu) Gomard de Vaubernier, Comtesse du Barry, who was Louis XV's last mistress until his death on 10 May 1774. The service was ordered in 1770 and noted in the sales records on 29 August 1771 where the decoration was described as ‘petits vases et guirlandes’. It was the first Sèvres service to include a monogram and neoclassical motifs and was probably intended for use at château de Louveciennes which Louis XV gave to Madame du Barry 1769. There were 36 seaux à verre costing 60 livres each amongst the 322 pieces. During the 1770s the use of individual wine-glass coolers became more common as the fashion grew for intimate dinners with fewer servants in attendance although services often included seau crénelé as well as individual seau à verre.1 A project drawing for the design of the decoration survives, annotated 'Projet d’un service pour être execute à Sève pour Mde du Barry, 1770' and 'à Madame, le Comtesse du Barry en son hotel à Paris'.2 The service was still in the possession of Madame du Barry at the time of her execution during the revolution on 8 December 1794. For a full discussion of this service and later Paris porcelain additions, see David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the 18th Century, Little Berkhamsted, 2005, Vol. II, pp. 461-464.

A seau à verre from this service, from 'A collection from an Hotel Particulier on the Avenue Montaigne', was sold in these Rooms on 2 June 2015, lot 58.

1. Linda Roth and Clare Le Corbeiller, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum; The J. Pierpont Morgan Collection, Wadsworth, 2000, p. 266, no. 137.

2. This is in the Bibliothèque de l’Institute, Paris, and it is attributed to Augustin de Saint-Aubin, an illustrator and engraver.