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Lot Essay
This superb garniture, with its distinctive finely cast ormolu satyr masks and draping swags mounted on vibrant Sèvres porcelain, is closely related to the oeuvre of marchand bijoutier Jean Dulac. Born in 1704, Dulac became a marchand-gantier-parfumeur before 1740, was appointed marchand privilégié du Roi on 16 May 1753 and, following that, marchand-bijoutier.
Dulac is most famous for his celebrated ‘vases Dulac’, the ingenious pop-up candelabra created in the 1760s consisting of ormolu mounts and almost always with bodies of Sèvres porcelain in a form known as a ‘vase cloche’. A pair of this model signed by Dulac, illustrated P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, pp. 72-73, was delivered to the king of Poland at Lazienski Palace, Warsaw. A parfumeur by profession, Dulac appears consistently in the sales register at Sèvres from 1758-1776.
The design for the present brûle-parfum, illustrated here, is part of the celebrated album of drawings of furniture and objets d’art (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Esmerian bequest), which is thought to be a form of sale catalogue of furniture and objets d’art produced by Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796) for one of his most important foreign clients Albert, Duke of Saxe-Teschen.
This brûle-parfum is nearly identical to a pair in the James A. de Rothschild collection, Waddesdon Manor, illustrated in Svend Eriksen, Early Neo-classicism in France, 1974, pl. 238, and to a similar single example which sold anonymously at Christie’s, New York, 21 October 1997, lot 277. Other models of this brûle-parfum are known with alternate colors of porcelain, including a pair of ormolu-mounted blue-ground Sèvres examples purchased by Horace Walpole from Madame Dulac in Paris in the autumn of 1765 for his friend John Chute, now at The Vyne, Hampshire (see P. Verlet, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1968, p. 232), and a similar example also with Sèvres soft-paste blue porcelain formerly with Galerie Michael Meyer, which is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue D. Alcouffe, La Folie D’Artois, Paris, 1988, p. 196.
The present pair of vases are related to a pair of green Sèvres porcelain vases with differing bases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1978.12.4, .5), and to a pair which sold anonymously at Christie’s, London, 10 June 2015, lot 93. A nearly identical ormolu-mounted green Sèvres porcelain garniture sold anonymously at Sotheby’s, Paris, 14 September 2017, lot 85 (€125,000).
Dulac is most famous for his celebrated ‘vases Dulac’, the ingenious pop-up candelabra created in the 1760s consisting of ormolu mounts and almost always with bodies of Sèvres porcelain in a form known as a ‘vase cloche’. A pair of this model signed by Dulac, illustrated P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, pp. 72-73, was delivered to the king of Poland at Lazienski Palace, Warsaw. A parfumeur by profession, Dulac appears consistently in the sales register at Sèvres from 1758-1776.
The design for the present brûle-parfum, illustrated here, is part of the celebrated album of drawings of furniture and objets d’art (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Esmerian bequest), which is thought to be a form of sale catalogue of furniture and objets d’art produced by Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796) for one of his most important foreign clients Albert, Duke of Saxe-Teschen.
This brûle-parfum is nearly identical to a pair in the James A. de Rothschild collection, Waddesdon Manor, illustrated in Svend Eriksen, Early Neo-classicism in France, 1974, pl. 238, and to a similar single example which sold anonymously at Christie’s, New York, 21 October 1997, lot 277. Other models of this brûle-parfum are known with alternate colors of porcelain, including a pair of ormolu-mounted blue-ground Sèvres examples purchased by Horace Walpole from Madame Dulac in Paris in the autumn of 1765 for his friend John Chute, now at The Vyne, Hampshire (see P. Verlet, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1968, p. 232), and a similar example also with Sèvres soft-paste blue porcelain formerly with Galerie Michael Meyer, which is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue D. Alcouffe, La Folie D’Artois, Paris, 1988, p. 196.
The present pair of vases are related to a pair of green Sèvres porcelain vases with differing bases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1978.12.4, .5), and to a pair which sold anonymously at Christie’s, London, 10 June 2015, lot 93. A nearly identical ormolu-mounted green Sèvres porcelain garniture sold anonymously at Sotheby’s, Paris, 14 September 2017, lot 85 (€125,000).