Page 28 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

FIGURE 13. Henri-Pierre
Danloux (1753-1809). Portrait
of Pierre-Victor, baron de Besenval
(1722-1791), showing him seated
beside a chimneypiece on which
is displayed a group of mounted
Chinese celadon porcelains. Further
mounted oriental porcelains (some
of them Japanese) are to be seen on
the top of a low cupboard behind
the sitter's head. Oil on canvas,
1790-91. London, formerly Stair
Sainty Matthiesen Inc.

2,489 livres (no. 91), and at the Randon de Boisset sale that the sitter was very much associated with the ancien
in 1777 two urns (no. 507) clearly mounted in the ro- regime and was a prominent member of the vieux cour,
coco style fetched 6,001 livres, some of which may have a close personal friend of Marie-Antoinette, and one
been accounted for by their elaborate marble plinths. whose taste might be expected to be retardant. During
Nevertheless, several other pieces in the same sale with- the last quarter of the century, the taste for oriental por-
out marble supports attained prices in excess of 3,000 celain generally and mounted porcelain in particular was
livres, a price beyond anything that Lazare Duvaux had increasingly overwhelmed by the new enthusiasm for
charged twenty years earlier. However, even these prices the world of antiquity.
were exceeded in 1782 by the sum of over 7,500 livres It is difficult to trace the history of a taste for
paid by Louis xvi for a pair of large celadon vases mounted oriental porcelains during the next fifty years:
60
(no. no), but these were mounted in the neoclassical documentary evidence is far too scanty. In the sale room,
style by Gouthiere. prices were far lower than they had been during the pre-
Danloux's portrait of the baron de Besenval, painted vious century, but the taste must have continued, for
in 1790-91 (fig. 13), when the French Revolution was porcelains with mounts clearly dating from the Louis-
in full progress, shows him seated beside a chimneypiece Philippe period are not uncommonly found today. They
covered with celadon porcelain mounted in the style es- are identified not only by the coarseness of the gilt-bronze
tablished fifty years earlier, but it must be remembered mounts, but also by the use of more richly decorated

I N T R O D U C T I O N 15