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A Gilt-Bronze Mounted Chinese Turquoise Porcelain Pot-Pourri Vase, the Porcelain Kangxi (1662-1722), the Mounts Louis XV, circa 1760-65, by François-Nicolas Vassoult

in the form of a lidded porcelain shell with snail-form knop; the bowl with pierced gilt bronze rim with lion masks at either end and a green-painted zinc liner, supported by porcelain coral branches and Foo Dogs clenching gilt bronze laurel swags; raised on a gilt-bronze concave triangular base chased with acanthus rosettes and piastre decoration; repairs to one Foo Dog and coral base
height: 15 ¾ in.; 40 cm
width: 13 ½ in.; 34 cm
depth: 8 ¼ in.; 21 cm
Acquired circa 1760-65 by Augustin Blondel de Gagny (1695-1776), Place Vendôme, Paris;
His sale 10 December 1776 - 22 January 1777, lot 701;
Acquired by Nicolas Beaujon (1718-1786), Hôtel d'Évreux, Paris;
His sale 25 April 1787, lot 321;
Acquired by the marchand mercier Claude-François Julliot (1727-1794) or his son Philippe-François Julliot (1755-1835);
Rothschild Collection, France;
Thence by descent to Baron Guy de Rothschild (1909-2007), Château de Ferrières, Ferrières-en-Brie, France;
Sotheby's Monaco, 3 December 1994, lot 81;
Private collection.
Alexandre Pradère, 'L'hôtel de Blondel de Gagny (1697-1777), place Vendôme, décor intérieur, ameublement et objets d’art',Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, Année 2017 (2024), p.50, fig.34.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Sven Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London 1974;
Pierre Verlet, Les bronzes dorés français du XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1987;
Thedore Dell, Furniture in the Frick Collection, vol. VI, New York 1992;
Kristel Smentek, Rococo Exotic : French Mounted Porcelains and the Allure of the East, New York 2007
Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, 'Le triomphe du goût à la grecque dans les arts décoratifs français (1750-1775),' in L’Objet d’Art, February 2008, no. 432, p.66-79;
Daniel Alcouffe, Anne Dion-Tenenbaum, Gérard Mabille, Les bronzes d’ameublement du Louvre, Dijon 2004;
Alexandre Pradère, 'L'hôtel de Blondel de Gagny (1697-1777), place Vendôme, décor intérieur, ameublement et objets d’art',Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, Année 2017 (2024), p.27-66.
This remarkable pot-pourri vase is an important example of the early transition from the rococo to neoclassicism in French metalwork design of the latter decades of Louis XV’s reign. It bears a highly distinguished provenance dating back to its creation, supplied to the great 18th-century Parisian connoisseur Augustin Blondel de Gagny for his residence in the Place Vendôme(now the Ritz Hotel) and subsequently owned by the royal banker Nicolas Beaujon at the hôtel d'Évreux (now the Elysée Palace), later passing into the collection of the French Rothschild family at their country seat the Château de Ferrières.

THE FASHION FOR MOUNTED PORCELAIN OBJECTS

The tradition of applying mounts in precious metals to imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain dates to the late Middle Ages and was practised throughout Europe, initially using silver and silver gilt, and occasionally gold. The expansion of trade through the development of the East India Companies in the seventeenth century resulted in a significant increase in the quantity of porcelain exported to the West matched by a similar rise in its appeal to wealthy collectors, many of whom had pieces mounted as a reflection of the status in which Oriental works of art were held, referred to by the contemporary art historian André Félibien as l’engouement pour la Chine. The trend reached its apogee during the reign of Louis XV, when gilt bronze had supplanted silver as the metal of choice. Elaborate designs were commissioned by the marchand mercier advisors and dealers from Parisian bronze manufacturers, often more costly than the porcelain itself, which enabled the dealers to charge higher prices and enhance their profit margins. One 18th century firm of marchand merciers associated specifically with mounted porcelain objects was the Julliot dynasty, founded by Claude-Antoine Julliot (d.1769) and continued by his son Claude-François (1727-1794) and grandson Philippe-François (1755-1835). In 1767 Claude-François commented ‘Les porcelaines anciennes …ornent avec un ton de noblesse le tact flou & séduisant des couleurs ce qui leur a maintenu la préférence chez ceux qui ont encore aujourd’hui le goût du vrai beau’, and further defined the expression le tact flou as a sort of sensation experienced by enthusiastic collectors when examining porcelain objects. Based on annotated sale catalogues of the period, the Julliot family appeared to particularly favour turquoise glazed Chinese porcelain, referred to as bleu céleste, which was relatively rarer than blue and white, Celadon or Imari decoration and appealed to numerous prominent tastemakers of the era, notably Marie-Antoinette, who entrusted her group of gilt-bronze mounted bleu céleste porcelain to the marchand Daguerre when she was compelled by the mob to leave Versailles in October 1789. Following her death the ensemble was retained by the Revolutionary government and is now in the Louvre.


‘UN DES PREMIERS & DES PLUS CURIEUX DE PARIS’: THE CABINET OF BLONDEL DE GAGNY

Augustin Blondel de Gagny was the son of Joseph Blondel (1661-1726), a high-ranking official in the Bâtiments du roi, the service responsible for the management and upkeep of the royal buildings and parks, who acquired the château de Gagny in 1706. Augustin enjoyed the protection of his friend and fellow collector Jean-Baptiste de Machault, comte d'Arnouville (1701-1794), the powerful Comptroller General of Finances, through whom he obtained the lucrative post of treasurer of the royal debt fund (Caisse des Amortissements) in 1750, and in 1752 he became head of the Menus Plaisirs du Roi, the body responsible for designing and overseeing the Royal Household’s festivities and entertainments, including the theatre and opera. Blondel was a keen music lover who possessed a harpsichord by Ruckers and a Stradivarius violin. Blondel only began collecting in the late 1730s following the death of his wife in 1730, acquiring paintings, lacquer objects, bronzes, furniture by Boulle, Cressent and BVRB among others, and Oriental and European porcelain both with and without gilt bronze mounts. By 1749 Blondel had attained enough notoriety to be included in a visitors’ artistic guide to Paris, theMémorial de Paris et de ses environs, which described the collection as one of the premier and most perfect in the capital and praised not only the important group of Italian and Dutch school pictures but also the works of art and especially the ‘porcelaines anciennes et modernes et surtout de Saxe, les mieux choisies et dont l’agrément et le goût de leurs montures semblent disputer de prix avec les pièces qu’elles accompagnent’ (p. 210).

At the time Blondel had been residing in the Place des Vosges since 1742, but in 1758 he took a lease on the hôtel deGramont at 15 Place Vendôme, constructed by the architect Pierre Bullet between 1708 and 1720 for the duchesse Anne de Gramont and acquired in 1750 by the financier Pierre-Charles de Villette (1700-1765). Blondel would remain in the townhouse for the rest of his life, sharing the premises with his assistant Claude Darras (1717-1788) (in 1897 it would be purchased with adjacent properties by César Ritz and converted into the eponymous hotel). Following his move Blondel continued to acquire artworks, and his collection became known as one of the most important in private hands in the kingdom, accessible for viewing by members of the public and receiving a prominent entry in Hébert’s 1766Dictionnaire pittoresque et historique, prefaced with a glowing encomium (p.36): ‘Le cabinet de M. Blondel de Gagny, place Louis le Grand, communément dite de Vendôme, est un des premiers & des plus curieux de Paris tant pour le choix des peintures, sculptures & dessins, que pour d'autres ouvrages extrêmement beaux, comme cabinets, et autres pièces d'ébénisterie du fameux Boul [...], une très grande quantité de bronzes, porcelaines anciennes des plus parfaites, & presque toutes du genre qu'on appelle première sorte.’

Hébert devoted over forty pages to a detailed description of the collection, likely based on an inventory provided by Blondel himself, and thanks to this account and the remarkable recent study by Alexandre Pradère, it has been possible to devise a virtual recreation of the interiors of what must have been one of the most extraordinary house museums of 18th century Paris.Blondel inhabited the first floor piano nobile of the hôtel, with a series of three appartements de représentation with windows on the square and three private apartments behind overlooking the courtyard, along with an enfilade of three rooms in a perpendicular garden wing. Each room appears to have been copiously filled with pictures hung in multiple rows covering all available wall space and a multitude of bronze and porcelain objects arranged both on the furniture, chimneypieces and wall brackets as well as on the floor against the wall and underneath tables and desks, a surfeit of artworks denoting a truly dedicated if not obsessional collector-connoisseur.

Hébert (p.43) records the present pot-pourri vase in the most prestigious room in the house, the central salon de compagnie with two windows overlooking Place Vendôme, its walls covered in red silk damask and hung with Dutch paintings, the furniture including two commodes by Boulle supporting a pair of gilt-bronze mounted porphyry vases (probably now at Fontainebleau) and a pair of Japanese-lacquer encoignures by BVRB identified with those in the Duc de Talleyrand sale of 1899 (Pradère p.37-41). The pot-pourri was placed in a prominent position on the centre of a giltwood console table with alabaster top set in the front of the room between the two windows, described as ‘un morceau composé avec une nacelle de porcelain ancienne bleu-céleste […] & deux Lions de même porcelain : ce morceau fait par Vassou, remarquable par l’élégance de sa monture’. It was flanked by three pairs of porcelain vases, two of these with gilt bronze mounts, including a celadon pair also supplied by Vassoult, along with a cabaret tea service with a lacquer tray. Hébert’s description is exceedingly valuable, not only in indicating the preeminent placement of the pot-pourri in Blondel’s overall mise-en-scène - which fundamentally must reflect its importance to him relative to the entire collection - but also in revealing the name of the manufacturer of the gilt bronze mounts, an extraordinary reference as only a handful of the many bronziers working in Ancien Régime Paris are known by name, and it is exceptionally rare to be able to ascribe the authorship of bronze-mounted objects from this period with certainly.

VASSOULT, A BRONZE ARTIST REDISCOVERED

The little-known François-Nicolas Vassoult (1704-1793) hailed from a dynasty of Parisian fondry workers, and his mounts for the present pot-pourri indicate his aristic abilities rivalled with those of the most celebrated bronziers of his era, notably Jacques Caffiéri(d.1755), who worked extensively for the Crown, and his son Philippe (d.1774). The research undertaken by Odile Fouchy-Le Bras indicates that in 1728 Vassoult is documented as residing in the Rue des Canettes, the same street as Jacques Caffiéri, of whom he was listed as a creditor following the latter’s death, and Vassoult also participated in compiling Caffiéri’s probate inventory. Vassoult was a member of the bronze casters guild and in 1752 is recorded in the Rue Guisarde, where he worked for several of the marchands merciers including Lazare-Duvaux, the primary advisor to Madame de Pompadour, and François Machart. He appears to have retired in the early 1770s, and an advertisement published in the gazette Annonces, affiches et avis divers on 18 May 1774 announced the sale of the fonds de boutique du Sieur Vassoult, fondeur : bras, flambeaux, girandoles, boëtes de pendules, modèles , écritoires, portes-montres et médaillons de cuivre, vases et pots de porcelaine.... rue Guisarde. The presence of unmounted porcelain items in his workshop stock might indicate he also worked as a dealer sellling directly to clients and bypassing the system of indirect sales through the marchands merciers. Vassoult clearly formed part of an elite group of bronziers patronised by clients at the highest level like Blondel de Gagny, who also commissioned work from Robert-Joseph August (1723-1805) and Edmé-Jean Gallien (1720-1797).

NICOLAS BEAUJON (1718-1786), BANKER AND ART LOVER

Following Blondel’s death in July 1776, his entire collection was sold at auction over multiple sessions held on 10-24 December 1776 and 8-22 January 1777, organised by the expert Pierre Remy. The catalogue bore only a brief introduction, justified according to its compilers by the renown and accessibility of the collection: ‘La réputation de ce Cabinet est si bien établie en Europe, par le concours d’Amateurs qui, dans tous les temps, ont eu la plus grand facilité pour le voir, que nous avons cru devoir nous dispenser d’en faire des éloges qui n’ajouteroient rien au mérite des objets capitaux, intéressants & agréables, dont il est composé.’ The pot-pourri appeared as Lot 701, ‘Une très belle coquille supportée par deux lions, de belle porcelaine bleu céleste; elle est montée en pot-pourri & garnie richement de bronze doré, posée sur une base de marbre Africain’. It sold for the signifcant sum of 1597 livres to Nicolas Beaujon. It would be sold again following Beaujon’s death at the dedicated auction of his collection on 25 April 1787, also organised by Remy, as lot 321 with a more detailed description: ‘Une belle coquille, ovale, à côtes & limaçon de relief sur le couvercle, ornée de gorge à jour & mascarons, terminée par un riche culot, elle est accompagnée de deux lions de même Porcelaine, tenant dans leur gueule des guirlandes de laurier; le tout placé sur un socle à moulures & rosasses en bronze doré, avec base de marbre Afriquain. Hauteur 17 pouces. no. 701 du C. de Gagny. Ce morceau, mérite attention par la singularité de sa forme & sa rareté.’It was purchased by the marchand mercier Julliot for 964 livres. It is noteworthy that this was the only lot in the entire catalogue that mentioned a provenance, and also interesting that originally the pot-pourri had a base of breccia africano, a marble used as tops for several items of case furniture in Blondel’s collection including the pair of Joseph lacquer cabinets also in this sale.

Nicolas Beaujon hailed from a prosperous merchant family in Bordeaux and settled in Paris in 1753, where he became a banker to the royal court and member of Louis XV’s conseil d’Etat, considerably expanding his wealth during the Seven Years War and becoming one of the richest men in France.In 1773 he purchased the Hôtel d'Évreux, which had been built in 1722 for Louis-Henri de La Tour d”Auvergne, Comte d’Evreux, off the Champs-Elysées, at the time open fields west of the Paris city centre, and subsequently acquired by Madame de Pompadour in 1753, reverting to the Crown after her death. Beaujon engaged the neoclassical architect Etienne-Louis Boullée to refurbish the residence to house his growing art collection, which like that of Blondel comprised important paintings of the Italian and Northern schools (including Holbein’s Ambassadors now in the National Gallery, London), some bronze and marble sculpture and vases, important furniture and tapestries, and in a particular a large assemblage of Asian and European porcelain, including a Chinese bleu turque vase with Goût Grec bronze mounts, the largest documented mounted vase of its type, that later passed into the collection of the Dukes of Bedford at Woburn Abbey (sold Sotheby’s London, 8 December 2009, lot 16). After his death Beaujon’s hôtel was bought by the Duchesse de Bourbon, who renamed it the Elysée, and during the Empire it was inhabited by Joachim and Caroline Murat and Napoleon himself before reverting again to the Crown with the restoration of the monarchy in 1815 and remaining under state control to become the Palais de l’Elysée in 1873, official residence of the President of the French Republic.


THE ROTHSCHILDS AT FERRIERES


At some point the pot-pourri entered the collection of the French Rothschilds and was housed at the Château de Ferrières, 30 km east of Paris, built in the neo-Renaissance style by the British architect Joseph Paxton in 1855-59 for Baron James Mayer de Rothschild (1792-1868), who moved to Paris in 1812 to establish the French branch of the family bank. With interiors designed by the artist Eugène Lami, the château was intended as a venue for entertaining and displaying the Baron’s exceptional art collection and was inaugurated by Napoléon III in 1862. The property descended in the male line to James’s son Alphonse James (1827-1905) and grandson Edouard Alphonse (1868-1949), who continued adding to the collection that epitomized the Goût Rothschild, an amalgam of superlative paintings and works of art displayed in interiors richly decorated with important high quality furniture, boiseries and textiles, ranging in origin and period from Italian Renaissance and Baroque to French Louis XIV, XV and XVI. The last Rothschild owner of Ferrières was Edouard’s son Guy (1909-2007), who with his second wife Baroness Marie-Hélène (1927-1996) renovated the property that had been emptied during the Second World War and entertained extensively before donating the château to the University of Paris in 1975.

COMPARABLE EXAMPLES

Two large vases comprising shell-form vessels were in the collection of the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin, sold Paris, 18 February 1793, lot 310, which to date have not been identified with any documented examples. A bleu céleste shell-form pot-pourri of the same model with an almost identical Foo dog and gilt bronze base was in the sale of Madame la Présidente de Bandeville, Paris, 3 December 1787, lot 253, passing in the 19th century into the collection of the Earls of Swinton, Swinton Park, North Yorkshire and then the Qizilbash Collection, sold Sotheby’s Paris, 28 November 2016, lot 9. The 1st Baron Masham of Swinton had combined this pot-pourri in c.1890 to form a garniture with a pair of mounted pot-pourri shell vases of the same model, with a single lion’s head mount, which were in the collection of the Ancien Régime soprano Sophie Arnould, sold Paris, 14 December 1778, lot 42.

A further pair of blue céleste lidded shell vases were in Blondel de Gagny’s collection and sold as lot 702 in the 1776 auction, described as ‘deux nacelles, ayant chacune sur le couvercle une petite coquille en forme de cornet; ells sont sur des terrasses, d’où semblent sortir des coraux qui servent de supports […] & sur des pieds à quatre consoles de bronze doré’.They were purchased by the bronzier Pierre Gouthière, who added swan’s neck mounts and supplied the pair to the Marquis de Clermont d’Amboise; these were confiscated during the Revolution and are now in the Louvre (illustrated Alcouffe 2004, no.110 p.216 and Charlotte Vignon and Christian Baulez, Pierre Gouthière:Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court, New York, Frick Collection 2016, no.7 p.178-181). Finally, a clock with the movement in a blue céleste shell mounted vertically on a nearly identical Foo dog and gilt bronze base is in a private collection, sold Drouot Paris, étude Dumousset, 7 July 1989, lot 208.

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