A pair of Sèvres blue-ground vases (vase chapelet), circa 1772

Each reserved with gilt-edged panels depicting classical landscape scenes after Boucher, one with a sleeping Venus, the other with a sleeping woman, the reverse with similar reserves depicting flowers, each surrounded by gilt acorn leaves, gilt foliate wreaths to the feet and necks, the gilt handles with beaded borders, moulded bead borders to the neck and foot, on square gilt metal bases, 27.9cm high (one with some damage, covers missing) (2)

Provenance:
Sir Walter Rockcliffe Farquhar, 3rd Bart (1810-1902), Polesden Lacey;
Thence by descent to the current owner

Literature:
R. Savill, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, vol. II (1988), p.789 and n.4

Exhibited:
Bethnal Green Museum, from 1929

These vases were exhibited from 1929 at the Bethnal Green Museum, which had been founded in 1872 as a branch museum of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Among many other disparate collections, much of Sir Richard Wallace's collection was displayed at the museum between 1872 and 1875 while Hertford House was being converted to receive it.

The plaster model for the vase chapelet, made in three sizes, was recorded in the 1814 inventory, illustrated in G. de Bellaigue (2009), p. 383, together with the 18th century drawings of the shape. It is so far unknown, when the shape was introduced in the manufactory, but the Royal Collection garniture is dated T for 1772. Unfortunately, none of the known vases have been identified in the sale records and the name of vase chapelet does not seem to have been used there, although the overtime records does mention the term in 1776. According to R. Savill (see above Literature), a single cover mounted in a gilt-bronze candlestick in the Wallace Collection is possible the cover to one of these vases.

A pair of very similar vases (also missing their covers), which are part of a garniture painted by Dodin is in the Royal Collection, see Geoffrey de Bellaigue, French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, vol. I (2009), no. 87. One of these is decorated with the same scene as one of the vases in the present lot, after the engraving 'Vénus endormie' by G. Demarteau after F. Boucher. A vase chapelet of the second size with a blue Taillandier ground is in Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire and another smaller pair with covers and pink Taillandier ground were sold at Sotheby's New York, 16 May 1987, lot 2, one of which is probably the one illustrated in M. Brunet/T. Préaud, Sèvres - des origines à nos jours (1978), p. 106, plate XLVI.