CIRCA 1747-1750, ALMOST CERTAINLY MODELED BY LOUIS-ANTOINE FOURNIER

Details

A VINCENNES PORCELAIN GLAZED WHITE FIGURE OF A RIVER GOD
CIRCA 1747-1750, ALMOST CERTAINLY MODELED BY LOUIS-ANTOINE FOURNIER
The nude male seated on the back of a dolphin, a paddle in his right hand
12 ¼ in. (31.1 cm.) high

Provenance

With The Antique Porcelain Company, London (aka The Antique Company of New York, Inc.), 1990s.
With Dragesco-Cramoisan, Paris, (acquired along with its female companion).
Patricia Hart, circa 2008 (the male figure only).

Literature

Svend Erikson and Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1987, pp. 194-195, nos. 5 and 6 (as owned by The Antique Company of New York, Inc.).
Sèvres, Société des Amis de Sèvres, no. 14, dated 2005, illus.
International Ceramics Fair and Seminar Handbook, June 2005, p. 56, illus.

Exhibited

London, Park Lane Hotel, Dragesco-Cramoisan, Paris at the International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, 16-19 June 2005.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Will Russell Specialist

Check the condition report or get in touch for additional information about this

WRussell@christies.com +1 212 636 2525

If you wish to view the condition report of this lot, please sign in to your account.

View condition report

Lot Essay

The present figure of a river god is a magnificent example of glazed soft-paste porcelain sculpture, its underside revealing exactly the same sort of handwork one would expect to find under a terracotta sculpture. It is likely the only one of the five examples known that will come onto the art market, all others being held either in public collections or in a private collection unlikely to be sold.

Its attribution to the sculptor Louis Antoine Fournier (1720-1786) is based on payment to him in 1747 as recorded in the Vincennes archives:
For a model of a naiad, 48 livres.
For a model in terracotta, 48 livres.
For mending and repairing 3 river gods and 3 naiads (no price mentioned).

The 3 fleuves et 3 nayades mentioned may well be the three pair extant:
· the pair now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (2017.74.31.1 - Gift and Bequest from the Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller).
· the pair now in a private New York collection
· the pair acquired by Dragesco in the 1990s of which the present example is the male figure.

Also extant are two examples of just the river god: one at Art Institute of Chicago [1993.350], the other at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts [1972.13], a slightly variant model, the base with the additional flowers and a larger paddle.

See Xavier Roger Marie, comte de Chavagnac & Gaston Antoine, marquis de Grollier, Histoire des manufactures françaises de porcelaine, Paris, 1906, p. 261 (chapter headed Sculpture de Porcelain Emaillé – Documents recueillis aux Archives de Sèvres).

More from A Life of Discerning Passions: The Collection of H. Rodes Sr. and Patricia Hart: Live

View All