419 - PAIR OF SÈVRES PORCELAIN CHAPELET VASES, CIRCA 1772.

PAIR OF SÈVRES PORCELAIN CHAPELET VASES, CIRCA 1772. A pair of "chapelet" shaped porcelain vases with a new blue ground, each adorned with oval gold-edged reserves depicting classical scenes after Boucher, one depicting a sleeping Venus, the other a sleeping woman, the reverse features similar reserves decorated with flowers. Each reserve is surrounded by gold oak-leaf garlands, and the feet and necks are adorned with gold leaf wreaths. The fully gilded handles are edged with pearls, and the neck and foot are adorned with molded pearls. All resting on square gilt-bronze bases. With porcelain and gilt bronze lids decorated en suite. Manufacture royale de Sèvres, circa 1772. No visible mark. The painting attributed to Charles-Nicolas DODIN (1734-1803). H. 33 cm (with lids). Provenance - Sir Walter Rockcliffe Farquhar, 3rd Baron (1810-1900), Polesden Lacey (England). - Then by descent. - Bonham's sale, London, July 6, 2021, lot 127, (without lids, sold for £17,750). - European private collection. Exhibition These vases were exhibited from 1929 onwards at Bethnal Green Museum, founded in 1872 as a branch museum of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Among many other disparate collections, a large part of Sir Richard Wallace's collection was exhibited at the museum between 1872 and 1875, when Hertford House was converted. Related works A pair of very similar vases (without lids), dated 1772 and painted by Dodin, part of a set, are in the Royal Collection (inv. RCIN 153); 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 virtually the same scene as one of the vases in the present lot, after the engraving "Vénus endormie" by G. Demarteau after François Boucher. A 2nd size chapelet vase with a Taillandier blue ground is in Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, and another smaller pair with Taillandier pink lids and ground was sold at Sotheby's New York, May 16, 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. History The plaster model of the chapelet vase, made in three sizes, appeared in the 1814 inventory, illustrated in G. de Bellaigue (2009), p. 383, with 18th-century drawings of the form. It is not yet known when this form was introduced to Sèvres, but the trim in the Royal Collection is dated T for 1772. Unfortunately, none of the known vases were identified in the sales records and the name chapelet vase does not appear to have been used there, although later records mention the term in 1776. According to R. Savill (see below), a single lid mounted on a gilded bronze candlestick in the Wallace Collection may be the lid of one of these vases. Literature R. Savill, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, vol. II (1988), p. 789, no. 4.