Tray

Maker Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory (French, active from 1756 to the present)

MakerFigural scenes painted by André-Vincent Vielliard (French, 1717-1790, active 1752 -1790)

Additional Title(s)

Plateau à Ornaments

ClassificationsDECORATIVE ARTS

Date1759

Mediumsoft-paste porcelain, overglaze pink ground color, polychrome enamel decoration, gilding, accented with carmine enamel

Dimensions1 3/4 x 12 x 9 in. (4.4 x 30.5 x 22.9 cm.)

DescriptionOval platter with a central recess in the center flanked by kidney-shaped figural reserves.

InscribedThe tray is painted underneath in blue enamel with the crossed Ls of the Sèvres manufactory enclosing the date letter G for 1759; above the Ls is a bar with three dots along the top, Vielliard's mark; below the Ls is a small dot. The bowl is incised underneath, in the bisque, B. Duveen labels: 28094 / 3, annotated in graphite, 13; 28520 / 3 pcs., annotated in graphite, 6

MarkingsThe tray is painted underneath in blue enamel with the crossed Ls of the Sèvres manufactory enclosing the date letter G for 1759; above the Ls is a bar with three dots along the top, Vielliard's mark; below the Ls is a small dot. The bowl is incised underneath, in the bisque, B. Duveen labels: 28094 / 3, annotated in graphite, 13; 28520 / 3 pcs., annotated in graphite, 6

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. The Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection.

Status

On view

Label TextThe round lidded bowl, écuelle ronde, and ornamented tray, plateau à ornements, are both of the second largest size for these shapes made at Sèvres. For a discussion of these models, see cat. 101. Both pieces are decorated with an overglaze pink ground color with two colored reserves on each part (bowl, lid, and tray) painted with peasant figures in rustic landscapes. Each reserve is edged with a tooled gilded band that is framed by an elaborate scrolled cartouche. The cartouches differ slightly in design on the separate parts, but are the same on each individual piece. The round depression in the center of the tray is decorated with a particularly dense scrolled rosette.
Similar peasant scenes in the manner of the seventeenth-century Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) are found on other pieces marked for the porcelain painter André-Vincent Vielliard. The figure grouping of an elderly seated couple on right reserve of the tray is found on a number of other pieces, many done by Vielliard between 1759 and 1764. This scene is adapted from a detail of an engraving called La Quatrième fête flamande copied from a painting by Teniers.
A bowl and tray of the same shape and size with a pink ground and reserves with similar Teniers-type scenes, including the scene of the elderly couple, is at the Taft Museum, Cincinnati. None of the elements on the Taft example has a decorator's mark; and, although the porcelain is thought to date to c. 1760, the decoration is considered to be later, with the reserves painted in the manner of Vielliard.

Object number27.53A