A Sèvres Plate from the Service des oiseaux des Amérique du Sud, Circa 1820

A Sèvres Plate from the Service des oiseaux des Amérique du Sud, Circa 1820

painted by Pauline Knip, with a Common ground dove perched on a gilt suspended platform titled COLOMBE/ COCOTZIN, the gilt banded cavetto inscribed ....(?) de Courcelles Lme Knip, the rim gilt with stylized leaves and fruit,
printed interlaced LL mark containing a fleur-de-li above the word Sevres, gilt No 23, incised P S 8

diameter 9 3/8 in.
23.8 cm

Condition Report:
Overall in good appearance and condition.
Some scattered typical minor surface scratching to gilding at cavetto.

Catalogue Note:
The artist, Madame Knip, née Pauline de Courcelles was employed at Sévres by the director of the factory Alexandre Brongniart on February 2, 1818. He wrote to her "I have every reason to think that your talent could be of regular use to the factory; you have acquired very sophisticated skills in this short space of time and this makes me think that you will daily give new perfection to your work on porcelain" (Tamara Préaud, The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Alexandre Brongniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry, 1800-1847, New York 1997, p. 359). In 1806 she had exhibited as a painter at the Salon, and in 1817 painted six plates of the Service Marli d'or.

A first entry in the manufactory salesroom is recorded on May 19, 1821:

'51 assiettes plates ordinaires avec oiseaux, 12 compotiers à pieds avec frise seulement, 2 glacières AB deux oiseaux sur chaque, 2 corbeilles cygne, 4 jattes à fruits avec deux oiseaux, 2 sucriers et plateaux Melissin',

[51 plates with birds, 12 compotiers à pieds with frieze only, 2 ice-pails 'AB' with two birds apiece, 2 swan baskets, 4 fruit bowls with two birds apiece, 2 sucriers and trays 'Melissin'], MNS Registre Vv I, fol. 160v, no. 51 (Wittwer, op. cit., p. 296)

On December 22, 1822, a further nine plates were recorded, MNS Registre Vv I, fol. 191, no. 35.

Part of the service was exhibited in January 1822 at the L'Exposition des Manufactures Royales at the Musée Royal, and in January 1826 on the orders of King Charles X the service was delivered to his niece, Marie-Thérèse, Dauphine of France.

For her work on the American Birds service Knip chose to study the stuffed specimens in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, rather than copy book illustrations. The service took three years to complete, which may have been due to Knip wanting to paint in her own studio in Paris rather than at the Sèvres painter's workshop. The gilt ornamentation was designed by Charles-François Leloy, and many of his original designs for the service are retained at the Sèvres archives.

Part of the service, which includes nine plates, is in the Hillwood Museum, Washington D.C., Bequest of Marjorie Merriweather Post, 1973; for four of the plates and a footed compote, jatte à fruit, see Préaud, op. cit., nos. 144a-e. Two plates from the service are illustrated in Samuel Wittwer, Refinement & Elegance, Early Nineteenth-Century Royal Porcelain from the Twinight Collection, New York, Munich 2007, pp. 296-298, cat. no. 91.