• Mount Congreve: The London Sal auction at Christies

    Sale 6258

    Mount Congreve: The London Sale

    London

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    23 May 2012

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    • A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WH
    Lot 13

    A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WHITE MARBLE URN PERFUME-BURNER

    BY MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1770

    Price realised

    GBP 79,250

    Estimate

    GBP 70,000 - GBP 100,000

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    A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WHITE MARBLE URN PERFUME-BURNER
    BY MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1770
    The circular pierced cover with flowerbud finial above a spreading stiff-leaf band, the body with a band of flowerheads within scrolls and flanked by arched looped pierced foliate handles with dolphin terminals, applied with oval neo-classical medallions hung from ribbon-ties and draped with husks above a fluted band and supported on acanthus leaves and a turned socle edged with ribbon-tied leaves, the lower plinth with bucrania hung with ribbon-tied swags
    13¼ in. (34 cm.) high

    Provenance

    As this is the only known single white marble vase of this model, it may well be the one offered by Matthew Boulton himself, Christie's, London, 16 May 1778, lot 62 ('An essence vase, statuary marble and or (sic) moulu with handles terminating in dolphins', bought in at £4 10s).

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    Literature and exhibited

    Literature

    COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
    Sir Nicholas Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, pp. 93, 295-297.


    Lot Essay

    Sir Nicholas Goodison records four pairs of these vases with identical mounts: a pair with blue (silvered) lacquer bodies and fluted lids at Syon House (ibid., pl. 258); another similar pair at the H. de Young Museum, San Francisco (the gift of Mr and Mrs Robert A. McGowan, 1982); a pair with white marble bodies and pierced lids, as in the case of the present vase, were previously with Partridge (ibid., pl. 259); and a pair in the Hermitage with blue john bodies, pierced lids, and additional green stone bases, probably from one of the Russian lapidary works, which were acquired in 1915 from the State Museum Fund (ibid, p. 297; L. Dukelskaya ed., The Hermitage: English Art, Leningrad, 1979, fig. 181, inv. no. 1561-2). The oval medallions derive from A.F. Gori's Museum Florentinum, 1731-1766, vol. II (1732), Gemmae Antiquae, and specifically copy plates XVI (Thalia), LXIX (Victory Salutaris), LXXIII (Woman at Altar) and LXXVII (Polyxena). Boulton and Fothergill had copies of some of the volumes of Gori's twelve volume book, though these were only purchased in 1771; it seems likely, therefore, that the designs for the medallions were copied from someone else's copy of the book or that they bought plaster casts of the images from which their mounts were made (ibid., pp. 92-94, figs. 61-62).

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