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

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1997 by Beth Carver Wees

9 See, for instance, Willi Coder et al., Johann Friedrich Bottger, die Erfindung des Europaischen Porzellans (Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Germany, 1982), Pls. 88 and 206, and pp. 13-14.

10 Allen et al., Eighteenth Century Meissen Porcelain, p. 41.

11 See Ingelore Menzhausen, Early Meissen Porcelain in Dresden (Thames and Hudson, New York, 1990), p. 17.

12 A similar figure is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Another, with its accompanying figure of a naiad, is illustrated in Svend Eriksen and Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain: Vincennes and Sevres 1740-1800 (Faber and Faber, London, 1987), Pls. 5 and 6. In related models produced at the Mennecy factory, the river god reclines against an urn. See, for example, Hermann Jedding, Europaisches Porzellan (Keysersche Verlasgsbuchhandlung, Munich, 1971), vol. 1, Fig. 797.

13 See Eriksen and de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain, Pls. 5 and 6.

14 Porcelaines de Vincennes: Les Origines de Sevres, ed. Tamara Preaud (Editions des Musees Nationaux, Paris, 1977), p. 166; and Tamara Preaud and Antoine d'Albis, La Porcelaine de Vincennes (Editions Adam Biro, Paris, 1991), p. 143, Fig. 92.

15 For his work as a gilder see Adrian Sassoon, Vincennes and Sevres Porcelain, Catalogue of the Collections (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, 1991), No. 30. Among Dieu's best-known examples of chinoiserie painting are two vases at Althorp in Northampton, England, that are illustrated in Eriksen and de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain, Pl. 142.

16 Although I have not found this theory proposed elsewhere, it is evident that other Sevres painters and gilders adopted punning marks. For example, the mark of the artist Henry Francois Vincent (1733-c. 1809) was "2000," which is written vingt cent, a pun on his name (see Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Sevres Porcelain [Wallace Collection, London, 1988], vol. 3, p. 1076). The symbol of a triangle containing the Hebrew name of God occasionally appears over the altars of French churches (see James A. Leith, "symbols in the French Revolution: The Strange Metamorphoses of the Triangle," in Symbols in Life and An: The Royal Society of Canada Symposium in Memory of George Whalley [McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1987], p. 110 and Fig. 13). My thanks to Megan Smetzer for advising me of this article.

17 Eriksen and de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain, pp. 86-87.

18 Savill, The Wallace Collection, vol. 2, pp. 501-502.

19 See Eriksen and de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain, pp. 348-349; and Jacques Charles et al., De Versailles & Paris, Le Destin des Collections Royales (Centre Culturel du Pantheon, Paris, 1989), No. 132. I am grateful to Bernard Dragesco for information about this service.

20 See Charles et al., De Versailles & Paris, no. 132; and Versailles et les Tables Royales en Europe, XVIIeme-XIXeme siecles (Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris, 1993), Nos. 108 and 109.

21 Antoinette Fay-Hale and Barbara Mundt, Porcelain of the Ninteenth Century (Rizzoli, New York, 1983), pp. 61-62. Jupiter and Io, now in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, was one of the works of art placed on display with the Imperial Collection in the late eighteenth century for the education of the public. See Manfred Leithe-Jasper et al., Vienna, The Kunsthistorisches Museum (Philip Wilson, London, 1984), pp. 133, 137.