Continental and English porcelain in the Clark collection - Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1997 by Beth Carver Wees

The plate in Plate VI is from the Service de la Reine ordered from Sevres by Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) in February 1784. Twenty-two craftsmen are recorded as' having worked on the 239-piece service? In the factory archives is a watercolor for the pattern, which also inspired grand services for King Gustave III (1746-1792) of Sweden and the comtesse d'Artois (1756-1805), the sister-in-law of Marie Antoinette.(20)

Clark appreciated the high level of technical and artistic excellence achieved by the Vienna porcelain factory in the early nineteenth century, and he acquired several splendid examples of its production. The cup shown in Plate V is decorated with a copy of Correggio's Jupiter and Io of about 1530. Copying paintings onto porcelain was among the greatest achievements of the factory, which insisted that its painters receive specialized training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.(21)

The bequest in 1986 of some fifty pieces of Worcester porcelain from the estate of Herbert Heidelberger, as well as additional gifts made in his memory, greatly enriched the institute's holdings of English porcelain. Heidelberger collected Worcester porcelain produced during the Dr. Wall period (1751-1776), including an early fluted bowl [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII OMITTED] probably inspired by a K'ang Hsi original. A pair of Worcester covered baskets with stands [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VIII OMITTED], often referred to as chestnut baskets, is ornamented with individually modeled and applied flowers and twig handles. The inside of the baskets and the center of the stands are painted with the famous Worcester blue-scale ground and with polychrome flowers in the reserves.

What Clark called in 1939 the "fine collection of cups & figurines I had gotten together"(22) has grown in breadth and depth. A little-explored aspect of his many collecting interests, it demonstrates the same passionate concern for style and quality evident in other areas of his collection. For the admirer of Continental and English porcelain, it offers a surprisingly rich survey of factories, painting style and techniques.

1 Robert Sterling Clark diaries, March 10, 1926 (archives of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, williamstown, Massachusetts). The objects noted were purchased from W. F. Cooper, 12 East 50th Street, New York City, but are no longer in the collection.

2 These also were purchased from Cooper and are no longer in the collection. See the Clark diaries, November 30, 1927, and invoices dated January 27 and November 31, 1927. All invoices mentioned am in the archives of the Clark Art Institute.

3 The candlestick was bought from Cooper in April 1932 (invoice in the archives). For the Sevres cups and saucers see the Clark diaries, December 8, 1936, and January 19, 1937.

4 Clark diaries, January 19, 1937.

5 Ibid., January 21 and 22, 1937.

6 Ibid., August 4, 9, and 18, 1939.

7 Exhibit Twenty-six: Fine Cups and Saucers (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1964).

8 See Armin B. Anen et al., Eighteenth Century Meissen Porcelain from the Collection of Gertrude J. and Robert T. Anderson (Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida, 1988), p. 16.