Page 33 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain Getty Museum

and Marguerite Jallut, Marie Antoinette (New York, 70. The more highly decorated wares of the famille verte and
1971), p. 60. famille rose were rarely mounted in eighteenth-century
55. See Fiske Kimball, Le style Louis XV: Origine et evolu- Paris. They were much favored in the nineteenth century
tion du rococo (Paris, 1949), pp. 59-111.
56. Earlier "experts" were not so easily deceived. Cataloguing when they became more accessible.
the "Porcelains de France" in the Gaignat collection in 71. The word magot strictly means a deformed figure or per-
1769, Pierre Remy wrote the following entry: "144:
son, but it was often applied to Chinese or Japanese por-
Quatre autres Vases de meme porcelaine & meme couleur, celain figures. An alternative name, specifically applying
blue celeste, d'une forme imitee de Japan" (Pierre Remy, to oriental figures of porcelain or lacquer, especially those
Catalogue raisonne des tableaux, groupes, et figures de with nodding heads, was pagode or pagoda: "Le caractere
bronze [Paris, 1769]). The best oriental monochrome soit naif, soit force des Pagodes, leurs attitudes & leurs
porcelains were then believed to be of Japanese and not expressions sont ce qu'on recherche le plus dans ce genre
Chinese manufacture. de curiosite, celles memes qui sont les plus difformes ont
57. In the late eighteenth century there was a tendency to des attitudes tout-a-fait plaisantes, pourvu qu'elles ne soit
pas decharnees; alors elles n'inspiront que le degout &
replace the fantasy world of chinoiserie by a closer I'effroi" (descriptive passage by the auctioneer Pierre
attempt to imitate oriental styles. This may be seen in a Remy in the sale catalogue of the Gaignat collection in
pair of black ground Sevres seaux a bouteille dated 1792, Paris, 1768).
in the J. Paul Getty Museum (ace. no. 7Z.DE.53). The 72. For example, the blanc-de-chine figure and cup with
decoration in gold and platinum is evidently an attempt flowers of Vincennes porcelain combined in an elaborate
to imitate the decoration of certain types of Japanese lac- "cage" of gilt bronze, from the Walters Art Gallery,
quer. Something of the same sort is to be seen in Charles- Baltimore, reproduced in Watson 1980, p. 29. This is
Nicolas Dodin's painting on the so-called "Dudley vases" a purely decorative object with no practical use.
in the Getty Museum (ace. no. 78.DE.358), which clearly
imitate either Canton enamels or perhaps Chinese silk
paintings.
58. For the two mounted Sevres vases in the James A.
de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, see
Svend Eriksen, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at
Waddeson Manor: Sevres Porcelain [Fribourg, 1968],
pp. 232-33, no. 79. When he was in Paris in 1765/66
Horace Walpole purchased a garniture of three bleu du
roi vases of this type with mounts in the high neoclassical
style and gave it to his friend John Chute. One is repro-
duced in Horace Walpole . . . Essays on the 2$oth
Anniversary of Walpole's Birth, ed. Warren Hunting
Smith (New Haven, 1967), between pp. 192 and 193.
59. Meteyard, Life ofjosiah Wedgwood, 1865-66, vol. 2,
p. 78.
60. They are now in the Louvre. One is illustrated in color
in Jarry 1981, fig. 23. The mounts are there described as
"attribute a Gouthiere," but, in fact, the sale catalogue
asserts positively that they are by him.

61. Seede Bellaigue 1974, vol. i, p. 758.
62. See de Bellaigue 1974, p. 758, where it is identified as a

vase now at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire.
63. For a more extended discussion of the evolution of the

taste for mounted porcelain, see Watson and Dauterman,

1966-70, vol. 4, pp. 375-9I-
64. Sale, Paris, December 1-21, 1782. A facsimile of the cata-

logue with a long introduction by Baron Charles Davillier
was published in 1880.
65. SeeHughes 1996, vol. 3, nos. Fii5-i6, pp. 1361-65.

66. Watson 1980, nos. 32a-c.

67. Die Franzosischen Zeichnungen der Kunstbibliothek
Berlin (Berlin, 1970), no. Hdz. 42. These drawings are
attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis but are doubtfully by

him, and OZ 81 Blatt 6.

68. See Hughes 1996, vol. 3, nos. Fii5-i6 (see note 65).

69. From the opening of the eighteenth century, shiploads

of blue-and-white porcelain were arriving in Antwerp

from China. The first large consignment of Japanese por-
celain reached a Dutch port in 1659 (see Volker, Porce-

lain and the Dutch East India Company).

20 INTRODUCTION