A LOUIS XV STYLE ENAMEL AND GOLD SNUFF-BOX

Details

A LOUIS XV STYLE ENAMEL AND GOLD SNUFF-BOX
POSSIBLY SWISS, BEARING PRESTIGE MARKS INCLUDING ONE IMITATING THE CHARGE OF JEAN-JACQUES PREVOST, ONE WITH A DATE LETTER CROWNED "H"

Rectangular box with canted corners, the cover centred by an oval enamel plaque painted with Le Concert du Grand Sultan, the base with children emulating an artist in his studio, after Boucher, the sides with similar plaques depicting playful children at various pursuits, all within gold borders chased with laurel leaf swags, the settings enamelled in opaque blue, the corners with roses
78 mm. wide

Provenance

C. H. T. Hawkins Collection, London
Robert William Partridge, London
His sale, Berlin, Gebrüder Heilbron, 8 May 1913, lot 212, illustr. pl. 9
Frederick R. Harris (in 1949)
Sydney J. Lamon Collection, New York
His sale, Christie's, London, 28 November 1973, lot 27

Literature

Serge Grandjean, Les tabatières du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1981, p. 357, no. 566.

Exhibited

Geneva, L'orfèvrerie française, 1951

Lot Essay

The enamel miniature on the lid is after Claude-Antoine Littret's engraving (1766) of Carle van Loo's Le Concert du Grand Sultan of 1747, now in the Wallace Collection, London.
This painting and its engraving by Littret must have enjoyed high popularity in the 18th Century as it can be found on two snuff-boxes in the Louvre (Grandjean, op. cit, nos. 522 and 566) and on the porcelain plaque of the guéridon painted by Dodin in 1774 for the Comtesse du Barry in Louveciennes.

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