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Lot Essay
This magnificent pair of Japanese porcelain vases belongs to a small group that appeared on the Parisian market in the 1760s, 1770s and 1780s and was highly coveted for the exceptional richness of its decoration and the beauty of its Parisian gilt-bronze mounts. The type, of which only a few instances are known today, combines large Imari-decorated baluster bodies of the early eighteenth century, in a shape referred to as ‘lisbets’ in catalogues of the period, with a scheme of ormolu mounts in the novel Neoclassical taste. They were undoubtedly conceived by a sole, as yet unidentified, marchand-mercier with uncommon access to fine Japanese porcelain and a keen understanding of the emerging desire for Neoclassicized objects. Although the present pair cannot be definitively traced to a known eighteenth-century inventory, the scheme of its decoration and bronzes allow us to confidently identify it with the celebrated type, frequently described in detail in catalogues of the period due to its high desirability, and even illustrated in a drawing by Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin in the margin of a catalogue for the duc d’Aumont’s 1782 sale.
The earliest recorded examples of this type are two pairs, which appear as consecutive lots in the auction of Jean de Julienne's collection on 30 March 1767, the second of which (lot 1379) became the pair in the duc d’Aumont’s sale. In the next three decades, eight or nine such pairs are known to have appeared at auction, consistently attracting high prices from an elite roster of many of the greatest eighteenth-century collectors: the comte de Merle, for example, purchased a pair in 1777 from Philippe-François Julliot for 1,109 livres 19 sols; a pair owned by Randon de Boisset achieved 2,099 livres 19 sols at his posthumous sale in 1777; the pair owned by the duc d’Aumont sold for 2,400 livres to Madame Rondet.
Saleroom catalogues of the time record not only these great prices, but also include editorial commentary remarking on their beauty. One pair can be traced through a remarkable succession of four collections, being purchased by Augustin Blondel de Gagny from the Jean de Julienne sale (lot 1378) in 1767, subsequently by Nicolas Beaujon from the de Gagny collection sale in 1776, and finally being bought in 1787 from the Beaujon sale by the dealer Légère. The praise awarded them does not change across the decades: in the de Julienne catalogue, they are described as “d’un genre intéressant & simple, que par la perfection de leur qualité & le bon goût des ornements en bronze”; in the Beaujon sale, the catalogue writes that they “sont à remarquer par leur bonne qualité, la beauté de leur forme & le bon genre des ornemens” (for a survey of all eighteenth-century appearances by vases of this type, see S. Vriz, “Le duc d’Aumont et les porcelaines d’Extrême-Orient de la collection de M. Jean de Jullienne”, Revue de la Société des Amis du Musée National de Céramique XXII, 2013, pp. 91-92).
Of the few known examples today, only one pair of vases retains a clue to its eighteenth-century provenance, being traditionally associated with the statesman and esteemed collector Jean-Baptiste de Machault d’Arnouville (1701-1794). These vases were sold from the collection of d’Arnouville’s direct descendant, the comte de la Panouse at the château de Thoiry at Sotheby’s, Monaco, 11 February 1979, lot 230 (140,000 FF), and according to family tradition, had been owned by Machault d’Arnouville himself. The comte’s ancestor ranked among the most powerful men at the court of Louis XV, a close confidante of Madame de Pompadour who shared her special interest in—and influence over—the arena of porcelain. His position as Contrôleur Général des Finances gave him direct oversight of the Vincennes porcelain manufactory and provided access to its finest creations, including an special gift (or ‘etrenne’) presented annually by the factory each New Year’s Day. He furnished both the château d'Arnouville and his hôtel in the latest taste, purchasing luxurious objects, including dazzling mounted porcelains, from the best dealers, including Hébert and Lazare Duvaux.
PORCELAINES DU JAPON AND THE PARISIAN TASTE
The great value of these vases in the eighteenth century attests to the tremendous rarity of fine Japanese porcelain in the Parisian marketplace. Unlike Chinese porcelain, which had been available to European collectors for many centuries, Japanese porcelain was a comparatively new presence. Japan had only begun producing true porcelain in the early seventeenth century, and began trading it internationally in the 1650s, filling a vacuum in the market left China’s diminished output during the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Once trade was reestablished with Europe by the Qing state, Chinese porcelain exports resumed their predominance in the Western market. Japan’s isolationist Edict of the Closure of the Country (Sakoku) made trade difficult, forbidding Europeans from setting foot on the mainland, and restricting trade with the West to the Netherlands.
At the Parisian shops, Japanese porcelain was sold alongside a wide range of luxurious objects including paintings, mirrors, clocks and lacquer, and regularly commanded a high price, befitting its rarity. Carolyn Sargentson has written that Japanese and Chinese porcelains were distinguished from one another in most shop inventories from the 1720s onward, and has calculated that Chinese porcelain was on average less highly valued than Japanese. Analyzing the 1724 inventory of the mercer Thomas-Joachim Hébert, she observes that Japanese objects were valued at an average of 12 livres each, whereas Chinese objects at an average of 8 livres each (C. Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth Century Paris, London, 1996, pp. 66-68).
Among the pool of available Japanese goods, those of a fineness or grandeur comparable to the present vases appear to have been especially uncommon, a trend that increased as fresh supply vanished in the later eighteenth century and objects began to be resold—with their designation as ancien, rather than nouveau, further compounding their value. Sargentson records mercers’ frustration with the difficult task of obtaining Japanese objects of the highest tiers of quality, and notes that of the objects available for them to stock, small tablewares, and especially cups and saucers, constituted by far the greatest segment. Oliver Impey has noted a steep decline in the import of Japanese porcelain beginning in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, making the finest of these objects all the more difficult to obtain thereafter (O. Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain: Catalogue of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 16). Paradoxically, even non-Japanese porcelains added to their prestige: as elite tastes evolved to favor monochromes, celadons and richly patterned pieces over blue-and-white wares, these were often perceived as Japanese, despite many being, in fact, Chinese (Sir F. Watson, Introduction to Mounted Oriental Porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum, ed. G. Wilson, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 17).
ORMOLU-MOUNTED JAPANESE PORCELAIN
Although unmounted vases of this type are known in Europe in the early eighteenth century (see the five-piece garniture at Dunham Massey, Cheshire, NT 929278, 929298.1-2, 929331), it was the addition in Paris of the gilt-bronze mounts that unified them into the precious group known in the late-eighteenth century salerooms. These mounts comprise an extremely well-executed expression of the early Neoclassical style, and would have situated these vases at the height of fashion in the latter years of the Ancien Régime. With each element deriving from the Classical vocabulary, the mounts frame the porcelain bodies, despite their Japanese origin, among the canon of objects belonging in a modern Neoclassical interior. Although fabricating the mounts would have represented a significant expense to the marchand-mercier responsible for their creation, the benefit of adding them to the vases is undeniable, elevating the rare objects to yet a higher level of preciousness. In Sargentson’s analysis of Hébert’s inventory, she notes that of the 4,600 porcelain objects counted, only 19 were mounted, with the average of their prices being multiple times the average of all other porcelain categories. A seven-piece garniture of the same painting style was, however, apparently available for sale in Paris without mounts, as documented by a drawing sent by the mercer Dominique Daguerre to the Duke and Duchess of Teschen, now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum (acc. no. 61.680.1.5).
EXTANT PAIRS OF THE SAME TYPE
A small group of other pairs are recorded in the twentieth century, though each with some differences from the others. The pair most similar to ours was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1993, lot 20 ($156,500), their ormolu feet, handles and pendant garlands apparently of the same models as these, though their rim mounts differ. Another pair was sold from the Collection of Edouard Chappey, Galerie Georges Petit, 17-31 May 1907, lot 1389, and later published in Partridge, Recent Acquisitions, 1994, no. 40, though these display variant mounts to the feet, and ormolu handles which hug the vases’ necks and do not descend as far down each shoulder as ours. The suspended laurel-wreath handles to these examples are significantly smaller than those to the present vases. The pair described above, sold from the comte de la Panouse’s collection (lot 230, 140,000 FF) is also mounted with these smaller handles, and was subsequently sold anonymously at Sotheby’s, London, 11 November 1988, lot 23 (£88,000), and again Sotheby’s, New York, 10 December 1994, lot 264 ($310,500). The same handles also appear on a pair in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Draguignan. Another was sold Piasa, Paris, 26 June 2001, lot 37, and another appeared in a 1989 catalogue published by Steinitz Gallery.
It must be noted that in all of these comparable examples, differences also appear in the decoration of the porcelain. Our vases are the only to employ exclusively fan-shaped reserves for their painted scenes (the other examples alternate fan-shaped reserves with scenes painted within rectangular ‘poem slip’ panels). The present pair is also the only known with gilt dragons around the necks.
Mounts strictly of this type are not known on other extant vases, though a pair of celadon gu vases sold from the collection of la Vicomtesse de Courval, Sotheby’s, Paris, 25 March 2014, lot 108 (€325,500) may relate to them. Intriguingly, a still life painting by Anne Vallyer-Coster exhibited at the 1777 Paris Salon and recently at the Dallas Museum of Art, depicts mounts of appearance identical to the present type, apparently mounted to a Chinese sang-de-boeuf vase.
The earliest recorded examples of this type are two pairs, which appear as consecutive lots in the auction of Jean de Julienne's collection on 30 March 1767, the second of which (lot 1379) became the pair in the duc d’Aumont’s sale. In the next three decades, eight or nine such pairs are known to have appeared at auction, consistently attracting high prices from an elite roster of many of the greatest eighteenth-century collectors: the comte de Merle, for example, purchased a pair in 1777 from Philippe-François Julliot for 1,109 livres 19 sols; a pair owned by Randon de Boisset achieved 2,099 livres 19 sols at his posthumous sale in 1777; the pair owned by the duc d’Aumont sold for 2,400 livres to Madame Rondet.
Saleroom catalogues of the time record not only these great prices, but also include editorial commentary remarking on their beauty. One pair can be traced through a remarkable succession of four collections, being purchased by Augustin Blondel de Gagny from the Jean de Julienne sale (lot 1378) in 1767, subsequently by Nicolas Beaujon from the de Gagny collection sale in 1776, and finally being bought in 1787 from the Beaujon sale by the dealer Légère. The praise awarded them does not change across the decades: in the de Julienne catalogue, they are described as “d’un genre intéressant & simple, que par la perfection de leur qualité & le bon goût des ornements en bronze”; in the Beaujon sale, the catalogue writes that they “sont à remarquer par leur bonne qualité, la beauté de leur forme & le bon genre des ornemens” (for a survey of all eighteenth-century appearances by vases of this type, see S. Vriz, “Le duc d’Aumont et les porcelaines d’Extrême-Orient de la collection de M. Jean de Jullienne”, Revue de la Société des Amis du Musée National de Céramique XXII, 2013, pp. 91-92).
Of the few known examples today, only one pair of vases retains a clue to its eighteenth-century provenance, being traditionally associated with the statesman and esteemed collector Jean-Baptiste de Machault d’Arnouville (1701-1794). These vases were sold from the collection of d’Arnouville’s direct descendant, the comte de la Panouse at the château de Thoiry at Sotheby’s, Monaco, 11 February 1979, lot 230 (140,000 FF), and according to family tradition, had been owned by Machault d’Arnouville himself. The comte’s ancestor ranked among the most powerful men at the court of Louis XV, a close confidante of Madame de Pompadour who shared her special interest in—and influence over—the arena of porcelain. His position as Contrôleur Général des Finances gave him direct oversight of the Vincennes porcelain manufactory and provided access to its finest creations, including an special gift (or ‘etrenne’) presented annually by the factory each New Year’s Day. He furnished both the château d'Arnouville and his hôtel in the latest taste, purchasing luxurious objects, including dazzling mounted porcelains, from the best dealers, including Hébert and Lazare Duvaux.
PORCELAINES DU JAPON AND THE PARISIAN TASTE
The great value of these vases in the eighteenth century attests to the tremendous rarity of fine Japanese porcelain in the Parisian marketplace. Unlike Chinese porcelain, which had been available to European collectors for many centuries, Japanese porcelain was a comparatively new presence. Japan had only begun producing true porcelain in the early seventeenth century, and began trading it internationally in the 1650s, filling a vacuum in the market left China’s diminished output during the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Once trade was reestablished with Europe by the Qing state, Chinese porcelain exports resumed their predominance in the Western market. Japan’s isolationist Edict of the Closure of the Country (Sakoku) made trade difficult, forbidding Europeans from setting foot on the mainland, and restricting trade with the West to the Netherlands.
At the Parisian shops, Japanese porcelain was sold alongside a wide range of luxurious objects including paintings, mirrors, clocks and lacquer, and regularly commanded a high price, befitting its rarity. Carolyn Sargentson has written that Japanese and Chinese porcelains were distinguished from one another in most shop inventories from the 1720s onward, and has calculated that Chinese porcelain was on average less highly valued than Japanese. Analyzing the 1724 inventory of the mercer Thomas-Joachim Hébert, she observes that Japanese objects were valued at an average of 12 livres each, whereas Chinese objects at an average of 8 livres each (C. Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth Century Paris, London, 1996, pp. 66-68).
Among the pool of available Japanese goods, those of a fineness or grandeur comparable to the present vases appear to have been especially uncommon, a trend that increased as fresh supply vanished in the later eighteenth century and objects began to be resold—with their designation as ancien, rather than nouveau, further compounding their value. Sargentson records mercers’ frustration with the difficult task of obtaining Japanese objects of the highest tiers of quality, and notes that of the objects available for them to stock, small tablewares, and especially cups and saucers, constituted by far the greatest segment. Oliver Impey has noted a steep decline in the import of Japanese porcelain beginning in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, making the finest of these objects all the more difficult to obtain thereafter (O. Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain: Catalogue of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 16). Paradoxically, even non-Japanese porcelains added to their prestige: as elite tastes evolved to favor monochromes, celadons and richly patterned pieces over blue-and-white wares, these were often perceived as Japanese, despite many being, in fact, Chinese (Sir F. Watson, Introduction to Mounted Oriental Porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum, ed. G. Wilson, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 17).
ORMOLU-MOUNTED JAPANESE PORCELAIN
Although unmounted vases of this type are known in Europe in the early eighteenth century (see the five-piece garniture at Dunham Massey, Cheshire, NT 929278, 929298.1-2, 929331), it was the addition in Paris of the gilt-bronze mounts that unified them into the precious group known in the late-eighteenth century salerooms. These mounts comprise an extremely well-executed expression of the early Neoclassical style, and would have situated these vases at the height of fashion in the latter years of the Ancien Régime. With each element deriving from the Classical vocabulary, the mounts frame the porcelain bodies, despite their Japanese origin, among the canon of objects belonging in a modern Neoclassical interior. Although fabricating the mounts would have represented a significant expense to the marchand-mercier responsible for their creation, the benefit of adding them to the vases is undeniable, elevating the rare objects to yet a higher level of preciousness. In Sargentson’s analysis of Hébert’s inventory, she notes that of the 4,600 porcelain objects counted, only 19 were mounted, with the average of their prices being multiple times the average of all other porcelain categories. A seven-piece garniture of the same painting style was, however, apparently available for sale in Paris without mounts, as documented by a drawing sent by the mercer Dominique Daguerre to the Duke and Duchess of Teschen, now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum (acc. no. 61.680.1.5).
EXTANT PAIRS OF THE SAME TYPE
A small group of other pairs are recorded in the twentieth century, though each with some differences from the others. The pair most similar to ours was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1993, lot 20 ($156,500), their ormolu feet, handles and pendant garlands apparently of the same models as these, though their rim mounts differ. Another pair was sold from the Collection of Edouard Chappey, Galerie Georges Petit, 17-31 May 1907, lot 1389, and later published in Partridge, Recent Acquisitions, 1994, no. 40, though these display variant mounts to the feet, and ormolu handles which hug the vases’ necks and do not descend as far down each shoulder as ours. The suspended laurel-wreath handles to these examples are significantly smaller than those to the present vases. The pair described above, sold from the comte de la Panouse’s collection (lot 230, 140,000 FF) is also mounted with these smaller handles, and was subsequently sold anonymously at Sotheby’s, London, 11 November 1988, lot 23 (£88,000), and again Sotheby’s, New York, 10 December 1994, lot 264 ($310,500). The same handles also appear on a pair in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Draguignan. Another was sold Piasa, Paris, 26 June 2001, lot 37, and another appeared in a 1989 catalogue published by Steinitz Gallery.
It must be noted that in all of these comparable examples, differences also appear in the decoration of the porcelain. Our vases are the only to employ exclusively fan-shaped reserves for their painted scenes (the other examples alternate fan-shaped reserves with scenes painted within rectangular ‘poem slip’ panels). The present pair is also the only known with gilt dragons around the necks.
Mounts strictly of this type are not known on other extant vases, though a pair of celadon gu vases sold from the collection of la Vicomtesse de Courval, Sotheby’s, Paris, 25 March 2014, lot 108 (€325,500) may relate to them. Intriguingly, a still life painting by Anne Vallyer-Coster exhibited at the 1777 Paris Salon and recently at the Dallas Museum of Art, depicts mounts of appearance identical to the present type, apparently mounted to a Chinese sang-de-boeuf vase.