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- François Boucher (1703 - 1770)
- Pastoral With a Couple near a Fountain
- France
- 1749
- P482
- Landing
- Bookmarkable URLWith its pendant, P482, the painting is one of Boucher’s most ambitious works in the pastoral mode. Boucher continued the pastoral, utopian mode of Watteau's Fêtes galantes, anchoring them more clearly in an idealised, Italian setting. By exchanging Watteau's contemporary Parisians with idealised shepherds and shjepherdesses, he further removed the scenes from a recognizable contemporary reality, transposing them into an entirely imaginary world. While Watteau produced cabinet pictures, usually of a small size, Boucher often employed the pastoral for large-scale room decorations such as in this case.
The two pictures originally belonged to the Daniel-Charles Trudaine, who worked as governor of the Auvergne, then was put in charge of roads and bridges in France and extended and modernised the network considerably. From 1745 he instigated and supervised the production of a new street atlas of France. Trudaine hung the two paintings in the grand salon on the ground floor of his château at Montigny–Lencoup near Fontainebleau.
The scene was inspired by the theatrical characters of the immensely popular pantomimes of Boucher's friend, Charles-Simon Favart. At the Opéra Comique, where Boucher was both set designer and a keen member of the audience, Favart’s musical dramas combined the Arcadian idealism and aristocratic sensibilities of pastoral poetry with the rustic, sentimental characters of popular theatre. Here we see a recreation of scene VI of Favart’s pantomime 'Les Vendanges de Tempé (The Harvest in the Vale of Tempé)', first produced in 1745, where the amorous Little Shepherd feeds grapes to the heroine, Lisette. The watching shepherd to the right is taken from a Rembrandt etching.
Boucher also provided a drawing of the main group to the Sèvres manufacture as a model for a porcelain group.
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- Snuff box
- Jean-François Breton (1713 - c. 1791)
- Paris, France
- 1749 - 1750
- G9
- Boudoir Cabinet
- Bookmarkable URLThis rectangular gold snuffbox has been chased with parallel horizontal lines beneath a pattern of leaves. Decoration in the form of figures, animals and landscape have been enamelled en plein (enamel added directly on the surface) in both opaque and translucent colours.
On the cover is a scene taken from an engraving by Pierre Aveline of La Vue from a series of the Five Senses published by Nicolas Contat, which shows a shepherdess gazing at her reflection in a stream watched by a shepherd and two figures. The reflection on the box has been engraved en basse taille (low relief engraving) which means that, we too can see the reflection she is looking at in the stream. The other sides depict similar pastoral scenes; on the base a shepherd asleep by a tree; on the front a shepherdess playing a pipe; on the back a fisherman; on the right-hand side two rabbits and on the left-hand side two exotic birds. The style of decoration, with only the faces in polychrome enamel is very similar to that of Sevrès porcelain in the 1750’s.
Snuffboxes played an important role in fashion and self-promotion, diplomacy and, in the 19th century, in collecting. Often they were used as a currency for their monetary values and the status they could embody. Their practical purpose was often secondary – they were highly valued as art objects in their own right. Gold boxes were a barometer of the taste of the time and exemplify the skills of not only goldsmiths, but also enamellers, lapidaries and miniature painters.
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- Secretaire
- Martin Carlin (1730 - 1785)
- France
- c. 1776
- F304
- Oval Drawing Room
- Bookmarkable URLSèvres porcelain plaques were first made for use on furniture in the late 1750s. The cabinet-maker Martin Carlin (c.1730-85) specialised in this kind of furniture, decorated with delicate floral panels of Sèvres porcelain. This desk ('secrétaire à abattant') was probably commissioned by the prominent dealers ('marchands-merciers') Simon-Philippe Poirier and Dominique Daguerre who dominated the market in this type of furniture. The front panel on which the plaque is mounted drops forward to reveal a rich interior of drawers and pigeonholes, with further drawers in the frieze and under the fall-front. The shelves on either side would have been for display.
The floral swag mounts along the frieze of the desk and the elegant tapering legs are typical of the neo-classical style, and of work by Carlin. The rich pink and purple colours of the wood veneers, now faded, would once have matched some of the bright colours on the porcelain plaques. The drawer front on the stand is mounted with a central apron-shaped plaque in a gilt-bronze surround, imitating a fringed drape, a form harking back to furniture of the late seventeenth century.
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- Writing- and reading-table
- Martin Carlin (1730 - 1785)
- France
- 1783 - 1784
- F327
- Study
- Bookmarkable URLThis table, characteristic of the 1780s in its ingenious mechanical fittings, combines a writing- and reading-table. Concealed within are two drawers, a candle-stand at each side and a mechanism allowing the entire top to be raised and tilted to form a book-rest.
The charm of the piece, however, is in the decoration of the gilt-bronze mounts and the porcelain plaques, which give it an exquisite refinement. Everything is of the highest quality - the cabinet-making, the gilt-bronze work and the painting on the Sèvres plaques (museum nos. C506a-e), which depict overflowing baskets of flowers and colourful ribbons and have been attributed to the Sèvres painter, Edme-François Bouilliat père (1746-1802).
The cabinet-maker was Martin Carlin (c.1730-1785), who often worked to the designs of the dealer Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796). This was almost certainly one of those pieces, and would have been bought by a highly-discerning and very wealthy client. The design idea seems to stem from the adjustable music stands with which Carlin can also be associated, and several versions of this kind of mechanical reading and writing table exist.
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- Miniature
- Maria Fagnani, 3rd Marchioness of Hertford
- Richard Cosway (1742 - 1821)
- England
- 1791
- 2007.2
- Reserve Vault 2
- Bookmarkable URLMaria Fagnani (1771 – 1856) was the illegitimate daughter of the Marchesa Fagnani, an Italian former dancer. In 1798 Maria married Francis Charles Seymour-Conway (1777 – 1842), from 1822 3rd Marquess of Hertford. The 3rd Marquess became the first great collector of the family. He acquired outstanding Dutch paintings, French furniture and Sèvres porcelain. His ambitious collecting was partly made possible by the enormous fortune that his wife brought into the family. Both George Augustus Selwyn and the 4th Duke of Queensbury left Maria Fagnani, known as Mie-Mie, their considerable fortunes because each man regarded her as his daughter. Together with the Hertford family fortune, her money assured the family enormous wealth, a consideration which might have helped to smooth over the difficulties of her turbulent and socially unequal marriage to the future 3rd Marquess.
Richard Cosway painted this miniature of Fagnani in 1791, eight years before the wedding and at a time when her future husband was only fourteen. It was not commissioned by the much younger future 3rd Marquess, but entered the family collection during the lifetime of the 4th Marquess, Fagnani’s son. He is known to have kept a miniature of her under the pillow of his bed.
This miniature is a typical work by Cosway. The blue background, the soft and pale colour-scheme based on the sophisticated use of the ivory colour of the ground and the slight stippling are typical of his work around 1790.
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- Mantel clock
- Jean-Baptiste-François Cronier (active between: c. 1781)
- France
- c. 1785
- F265
- Oval Drawing Room
- Bookmarkable URLSpring-driven clock with an upright case of gilt-bronze mounted with nine porcelain plaques painted with turquoise-blue borders enclosing panels of gilt trellis-work and with white reserves painted with flowers. The plaques are possibly made in hard paste, as late eighteenth-century imitations of Sèvres porcelain. The clock movement is by Jean-Baptiste-François Cronier (master 1781), recorded on the quai de la Mégisserie between 1783 and 1800. The dial is by Pierre Bezelle, recorded in the rue de l’Arbre-Sec at the time of his marriage in 1768. This clock, like the column clock described above, was in the collection of the 4th Marquess of Hertford by 1865, when it was lent to the Musée Rétrospectif exhibition in Paris.
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- Roll-top desk
- Copy of the bureau du roi of Louis XV
- Dreschler
- France
- c. 1855 - 1860
- F460
- Back State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis desk is a copy of probably the most celebrated piece of eighteenth-century French furniture, the 'bureau du roi', or roll-top desk (the first of its kind) now at Versailles, which was made for Louis XV by Jean-François Oeben (1721-1763) and Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) and delivered in 1769.
It was made for the 4th Marquess of Hertford, probably by Carl Dreschler, in Paris. In the 1850s the 4th Marquess of Hertford was a friend of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie and is likely to have seen the original desk, either in the grand salon of the Tuileries or, later, in Eugénie's study at the palace of Saint-Cloud to where it was moved by 1855. The maker has copied the desk as it was after the alterations of 1794, when the original interlaced Ls of Louis XV were replaced with biscuit porcelain Sèvres plaques and elements of the marquetry decoration were changed.
Lord Hertford's copy may date from the 1850s and is believed to have cost him £3000, an enormous amount of money. He commissioned other copies of celebrated pieces of French eighteenth-century furniture at this time, made in both France and England, but this and a copy of the bureau of the Elector of Bavaria (museum number F461) are the only two in the Wallace Collection. His copy of the bureau du roi was the first of a number of copies that were produced from the 1870s by leading cabinet-makers in Paris, including Henri Dasson (exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in 1878), J-E. Zweiner, Alfred Beurdeley, J-H. Jansen and François Linke.
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- Column clock
- Germain Dubois
- France
- 1786
- F262
- Dining Room
- Bookmarkable URLSpring-driven clock with a case in the form of a fluted, Sèvres soft-paste porcelain column supporting a vase of the same material. Gilt-bronze swags of flowers decorate the case and part of the clock face. The column rests on two gilt-bronze collars above a marble base with four gilt-bronze bun feet. This kind of column clock was first produced at Sèvres in 1771 and the shape of vase on the top in 1778. The stem of the vase has been repaired and the knop of the cover is a replacement. The clock was in the collection of the 4th Marquess of Hertford by 1865, when he lent it along with many other works of art from his Parisian collection to the Musée Rétrospectif exhibition in Paris.
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- Snuff box
- Jean Ducrollay (c. 1710 - 1787)
- Paris, France
- 1759 - 1760
- G31
- Boudoir Cabinet
- Bookmarkable URLSix panels of Sèvres porcelain have been mounted into this rectangular gold box. The panels are painted in the famous blue céleste (sky blue) colour that the porcelain factory is known for. They have been gilt with an irregular diaper (diamond) pattern which surround six reserves each one representing Music, Poetry, Theatre and Love. The gold frame is decorated with a chased Greek key pattern with rosettes at the corners. The interior of the box is gold.
The cover and base both depict two armorini with a dove and arrows representing Love, and on the base two armorini, one with a Lyre and one with a Book representing Music and Poetry. The sides are decorated with trophies representing Music, Poetry, the Theatre and History. The source for the two scenes of armorinis are after designs by Boucher. The image on the base is taken from “Deux amours avec emblems de la poésie” engraved by Giles Demarteau.The design for the gold decoration is in the Ducrollay, Drais and Ouzille design book in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Sèvres factory made porcelain plaques that could be bought ready to be mounted into furniture or snuffboxes. “Plaques de tabatière” [Snuffbox plaques] first appear in the factory records in February 1754, and continued to be produced in large numbers until the late 1750’s. Generally the cost for six plaques was 360 livres, though they could range between 288 livres and 600 livres. Only three snuffboxes with blue celeste ground were sold at Sèvres. It is known that Mme Duvaux, wife of the dealer Lazare Duvaux bought two, and it is possible that one of these went into the construction of this box.
This box was a gift from Louis XV to the duchesse de Castropignano, lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Spain.
Snuffboxes played an important role in fashion and self-promotion, diplomacy and, in the 19th century, in collecting. Often they were used as a currency for their monetary values and the status they could embody. Their practical purpose was often secondary – they were highly valued as art objects in their own right. Gold boxes were a barometer of the taste of the time and exemplify the skills of not only goldsmiths, but also enamellers, lapidaries and miniature painters.
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- Vase
- Attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis (c. 1695 - 1774)
- France and China
- c. 1750
- F113
- Small Drawing Room
- Bookmarkable URLThe authorship of many of the Parisian gilt-bronze mounts that were added to oriental porcelain in the eighteenth century remains anonymous but the ones on this celadon vase are attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis, a highly talented designer and sculptor who was also a goldsmith and bronze founder. He worked as the 'directeur artistique' of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory between 1748 and 1774 where he designed new models of vases, tea wares and dinner services, and he also designed gilt-bronze mounts for the luxury goods retailer, Lazare Duvaux. The mounts on this vase are reminiscent of the volute-shaped feet and overlapping foliate scrolls found on some of his designs for Sèvres which can be seen on porcelain in the Wallace Collection. Lazare Duvaux was one of the most fashionable dealers and his account books show that he charged extremely high prices; in 1750 he sold two celadon vases mounted by Duplessis to the marquis de Voyer for the enormous sum of 3,000 livres.
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- Snuff box
- Alexandre Leferre
- Paris, France
- after 1838
- G65
- Boudoir Cabinet
- Bookmarkable URLSquare snuff box composed of Sèvres porcelain, showing groups of Amorini, very delicately painted on a white ground. These are set in gold mounts. The lid shows three nude children playing among trees and plants. The Sèvres plaques are painted in the style of André-Vincent Vielliard in the 1750s.The subject on the base appears in reverse on a vase of c.1783 in the Musée du Louvre, where the style is typical of later cherub painting at Sèvres. The combination of cherubs and children in a set of plaques is unusual, the painting is flimsy for Sèvres, and th uncommon matt glazecould indicate refiring.
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- Filing-cabinet and clock
- Jean-François Leleu (1729 - 1807)
- France
- c. 1766 - 1767
- F71
- Back State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis filing cabinet was made in c. 1766-67 by Jean-Francois Leleu (1729-1807) but its appearance has been altered in the nineteenth century. Originally it was an open-fronted cabinet, somewhat lower than it is now, supported on a base with eight drawers at each side (and not on the front), on each of which were two Sèvres plaques. It was made to go en suite with a writing table, and it is most likely that the one that originally accompanied it is the Leleu table now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is mounted with Sèvres plaques also dating from 1765-6 and with the same decoration. In 1766 the dealer ('marchand mercier') Simon-Philippe Poirier ordered 70 plaques from the Sèvres manufactory, enough to complete the filing cabinet and the table. He would also have commissioned the gilt-bronze mounts and the clock case, the latter probably from Jean-Claude-Thomas Duplessis fils (c. 1730-83). The movement of the clock is dated 1765 and signed by Julien Le Roy (1686-1759), but it is likely that it was supplied by his son, Pierre Le Roy (1717-85).
The London dealer Edward Homes Baldock bought the filing cabinet in 1829 and subsequently carried out the various alterations which give it its current appearance. These included raising the filing cabinet by adding the plinths below the gilt-bronze consoles at the sides, adding the present doors on the front with their Sèvres porcelain trays and gilt-bronze ribbon mounts, and transferring the drawers from the sides to the front of the base. Such alterations would have been intended to attract a nineteenth-century buyer, many of whom were passionate about Sèvres porecelain.
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