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Lot Essay
Each of these impressive bottle vases is composed from multiple pieces of porcelain: a ginger jar forming each body is joined to a neck and cover from other Chinese objects, the three being unified by their decoration in the famille verte color palette. Polychrome enameled wares were prized in the shops of eighteenth-century Paris, commanding a higher price than the more common works decorated in blue-and-white (C. Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth Century Paris, London, 1996, pp. 66-67). Although 'famille verte' wares were not classified as a distinct category of polychrome porcelain until the nineteenth century, it can nonetheless be stated that large-scale objects decorated in this technique were rarer than blue-and-whites, especially when fitted with the present type of superbly-modeled ormolu mounts.
The present vases embody the ingenuity of the merchants who supplied East Asian ceramics, and their abilities to unite diverse and sometimes very unexpected objects into wholly new pieces in innovative shapes. At times, this allowed these mercers to better adapt their goods to the ever-evolving fashions of their European clients, while at other times it may have reflected a more pragmatic aim, allowing them to salvage some of the value of an object which had arrived damaged. The distinctive mounts on these striking vases, displaying a remarkable freedom and fluidity of design, with their particularly exuberant rocaille feet, may point to an origin outside France. The expressiveness of the mounts could point to Italy as a possible origin, where bronziers such as the Turinese sculptor Francesco Ladatte produced a distinctive version of the pittoresque style.
A pair of the same model but lacking covers, and with necks executed not in porcelain, but in cuivre doré, comprised part of the Collection of Mme. Camille Lelong, sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 27 April-1 May 1903, lot 230, while the Lelong pair, or possibly the pair offered here, appears in an undated photograph of the salon of the residence of Antenor and Beatriz Patiño on the rue d'Andigné, Paris. The form appears to have been greatly appreciated in the nineteenth century, as numerous reproductions were made by Samson, including one sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 April 2012, lot 169 ($25,000), with ormolu mounts signed by Maison Millet. According to Florence Slitine, a photograph of a nearly identical example is preserved in the Archives de la Manufacture Nationale de Sévres (M.N.S.) referred to as pot à tabac Lelong (F. Slitine, Samson genie de l’imitation, Paris, 2002, p. 167).
MADAME DUBERNET-DOUINE
This pair of vases previously belonged to the celebrated collection of the French patron of the arts and philanthropist, Madame Dubernet-Douine, born Anne-Marie Dubernet, known as Cyprienne, then Madame Olympe Hériot, and later Madame Roger Douine (1857-1945). Her life story echoes that of Denise in Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Dames: she was born the daughter of a wool-spinner and worked as a saleswoman in the corset department of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, before marrying in 1887 its director-proprietor Olympe Hériot (1833-1899), who was 25 years her senior. The Hériots moved to a hôtel particulier on the rue Euler in Paris in 1894. Cyprienne was widowed shortly thereafter in 1899, inheriting her husband's fortune, with which she commissioned a new and extravagant hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie, built by the architect Georges Tersling, who had already worked for Olympe Hériot at his country estate, the château de la Boissière near Rambouillet, circa 1890. She was remarried in 1908 to Roger Hippolyte Douine (d. 1925). Her collection, including Impressionist paintings, Old Masters and eighteenth-century furniture and tapestries, graced her many homes in Paris and the country. Towards the end of her life her collection was concentrated at the château de la Boissière, and was sold after her death at Galerie Charpentier in Paris in 1946.
The present vases embody the ingenuity of the merchants who supplied East Asian ceramics, and their abilities to unite diverse and sometimes very unexpected objects into wholly new pieces in innovative shapes. At times, this allowed these mercers to better adapt their goods to the ever-evolving fashions of their European clients, while at other times it may have reflected a more pragmatic aim, allowing them to salvage some of the value of an object which had arrived damaged. The distinctive mounts on these striking vases, displaying a remarkable freedom and fluidity of design, with their particularly exuberant rocaille feet, may point to an origin outside France. The expressiveness of the mounts could point to Italy as a possible origin, where bronziers such as the Turinese sculptor Francesco Ladatte produced a distinctive version of the pittoresque style.
A pair of the same model but lacking covers, and with necks executed not in porcelain, but in cuivre doré, comprised part of the Collection of Mme. Camille Lelong, sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 27 April-1 May 1903, lot 230, while the Lelong pair, or possibly the pair offered here, appears in an undated photograph of the salon of the residence of Antenor and Beatriz Patiño on the rue d'Andigné, Paris. The form appears to have been greatly appreciated in the nineteenth century, as numerous reproductions were made by Samson, including one sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 April 2012, lot 169 ($25,000), with ormolu mounts signed by Maison Millet. According to Florence Slitine, a photograph of a nearly identical example is preserved in the Archives de la Manufacture Nationale de Sévres (M.N.S.) referred to as pot à tabac Lelong (F. Slitine, Samson genie de l’imitation, Paris, 2002, p. 167).
MADAME DUBERNET-DOUINE
This pair of vases previously belonged to the celebrated collection of the French patron of the arts and philanthropist, Madame Dubernet-Douine, born Anne-Marie Dubernet, known as Cyprienne, then Madame Olympe Hériot, and later Madame Roger Douine (1857-1945). Her life story echoes that of Denise in Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Dames: she was born the daughter of a wool-spinner and worked as a saleswoman in the corset department of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, before marrying in 1887 its director-proprietor Olympe Hériot (1833-1899), who was 25 years her senior. The Hériots moved to a hôtel particulier on the rue Euler in Paris in 1894. Cyprienne was widowed shortly thereafter in 1899, inheriting her husband's fortune, with which she commissioned a new and extravagant hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie, built by the architect Georges Tersling, who had already worked for Olympe Hériot at his country estate, the château de la Boissière near Rambouillet, circa 1890. She was remarried in 1908 to Roger Hippolyte Douine (d. 1925). Her collection, including Impressionist paintings, Old Masters and eighteenth-century furniture and tapestries, graced her many homes in Paris and the country. Towards the end of her life her collection was concentrated at the château de la Boissière, and was sold after her death at Galerie Charpentier in Paris in 1946.