THE SOFT-PASTE PORCELAIN OF FRANCE
SAINT-CLOUD--LILLE--CHANTILLY--MENNECY--PARIS--VINCENNES--SÈVRES.
We have now to take up the history of the soft-paste porcelain of
France, and in the first place to follow the stages that intervene
between the early tentative ware made by Poterat at Rouen (see p. 239)
and the fully developed ‘artificial’ porcelain of Sèvres. We have, then,
to deal first with the wares of Saint-Cloud and Chantilly, and in part
with those of Lille and Mennecy-Villeroy.
But before saying anything of the different wares we had better go back
to the technical side of our subject, and give some explanation of the
term soft paste,[169] artificial paste, or frit paste.
We have come across something of this sort before in the case of the
Medici ware. This was essentially the combination of a glass with a fine
white clay. When we come to the French soft paste we find the kaolinic
element replaced by something between a calcareous clay and an impure
limestone, the _marne_ of the French, which may be rendered by our
somewhat vague expression, marl.
M. Vogt (_La Porcelaine_, Paris, 1893) quotes from a memoir drawn up in
1753 by Hellot, a prominent member of the Academy of Science, which well
illustrates the point of view of the time. Hellot knew all about kaolin
and petuntse, as described by the Jesuit missionaries, but he despaired
of finding the materials in France. M. de Réaumur, he tells us, made, it
is true, a greyish refractory ware from what he (Réaumur) claimed to be
the French equivalent of these materials, but the ‘firm, compact,
snow-like porcelain of China, what we commonly know as _Ancien Japon_
(_sic_) has yet to be imitated.’ After giving an outline of the history
of French soft paste up to this time (to this important contemporary
evidence we shall return shortly), Hellot claims that this soft paste is
equal to the real ‘Japan,’ except that the grain is less fine, while as
for ‘the Saxon ware, it is no porcelain at all except on the exterior.
When broken it is easy to see that it is merely a white enamel, only
harder than the ordinary enamel of painters.’ This, be it noted, is
written forty years after Böttger’s great discovery. We see by it how
well the secret was kept.[170]
_There is no question, therefore, but of soft-paste porcelain._ It is
thus that Hellot sums up his report, written at the critical period when
it was proposed to remove the Vincennes works to Sèvres, and place them
under more immediate royal protection, and for this verdict we have
every reason to be thankful.
It is from this same memoir, _Recueil de tous les procédés de la
Porcelaine de la Manufacture Royale de Vincennes_, that we obtain the
most accurate details of the composition of the soft paste made at this
time. It was a strictly private document, written expressly for the king
by Hellot, who had recently been appointed to the direction of the
Vincennes factory. This report was unearthed some time ago from among
the archives at Sèvres.
According to Hellot, writing in 1753, just as the Chinese combine the
more fusible petuntse with the kaolin--‘a kind of talc which neither
calcines nor vitrifies’--so with our frit, an artificial petuntse, we
must mix, not an unctuous fusible clay, but some fine white infusible
substance. Such a material is found in certain _marnes_ obtained from
the gypsum quarries near Paris.
The frit employed at Vincennes at this time--and the composition seems
to have varied little up to the last days of soft paste in France--was
essentially an alkaline silicate, containing also some lime and alumina,
as will be seen from the following recipe:--
Fused nitre, 22 per cent.
Sea salt, 7 ”
Alicante soda, 3·7 ”
Rock alum, 3·7 ”
Montmartre gypsum, 3·7 ”
Fontainebleau sand, 60 ”
These ingredients, some of which are soluble in water, are fritted
together--that is to say, imperfectly fused--in a part of the kiln
specially reserved for them, great precautions being taken to regulate
the heat. After reducing the frit to powder, the superfluous salts had
to be thoroughly washed out by means of boiling water, before the
substance was fit for mixing with the ‘body’ constituent of the paste.
This body is prepared from the _grosse marne_ found at Argenteuil, by
careful sifting and decantation. Six parts of the prepared frit are
mixed with one part of the washed marl and with one part of a kind of
chalk called _blanc d’Espagne_ (this last substance was afterwards
dispensed with), and the whole thoroughly united by a grinding process
which lasted for nine days. The resulting paste was made up into balls
and allowed to ‘ferment’ for seven or eight months.
Now, if we glance over the various materials that have entered into the
composition of this very ‘artificial’ paste, we see that alumina, the
substance which, together with silica, we regard as the essential
element in all fictile materials, is present in very small quantities;
what there is of it can only be derived from the marl and from the alum
in the frit; and this inference is confirmed by an analysis made by
Salvétat--he found, indeed, only 2·23 per cent. of this earth in a
fragment of old Sèvres. It may safely be said that in no other fictile
ware is so small a quantity of alumina present. With this poverty of
alumina we may associate the want of plasticity--the extreme ‘shortness’
which distinguishes this clay, if clay it can be called. In order to
throw it on the wheel it had to be worked up with a certain quantity of
_chimie_, a mixture of black soap and fine glue; at a later time gum
tragacanth was used. Most of the soft paste, indeed, was made in moulds,
but even in this case the _pâte chimisée_ had to be employed. It was not
till a later time that these difficulties were in part overcome by the
introduction of the English process of ‘casting.’
The kilns at this time were small, with only one hearth, in which poplar
wood was burned, but the firing was sometimes continued for more than a
hundred hours. Hellot tells us that after the first firing more than
two-thirds of the charge had generally to be rejected. The
remainder--the successful biscuitware--was now polished with grit-stone,
before being dipped into the soup-like glaze slip: in the case of
vessels of complicated outline, the glaze was painted on with a brush.
This ‘enamel,’ as the French sometimes call it--the term must not be
confused with our use of that word--was essentially a silicate of lead,
soda, and potash--a flint or crystal glass, in fact, containing nearly
40 per cent. of litharge. Hellot describes its preparation as follows:
the constituents of the glaze, thoroughly mingled together, were melted
to a glass, which had then to be reduced to a fine powder, and mixed
with water and vinegar to form the slip. The presence of vinegar
hindered the deposition of the solid particles in the soup-like liquid,
and at the same time promoted the adhesion of the slip to the surface of
the biscuit. This biscuit, with its thick coating of glaze, was now
again fired, this time at a more gentle temperature.
The plain white ware was now handed over to the painters and gilders,
and it is at this stage that the advantage resulting from this thick
coating of an easily fusible, lustrous glaze asserts itself. The
pigments themselves, suspended in a flux of similar constitution, are at
the temperature of the muffle-stove completely incorporated with the
subjacent glaze, and do not, as in the case of the German and still more
of the later Sèvres hard paste, lie as a dead coating on the surface.
Hellot gives in his report numerous recipes for these enamel
colours--there are as many as twenty-five for the blacks alone--but from
these empirical data little is to be learned. It would seem, however,
that the ‘enamels of Venice,’ prepared doubtless by the Murano
glassblowers, were imported for this purpose.
The muffle-firing was a long and complicated process--the preliminary
heating in the case of large pieces occupied twenty-five hours. The
superintendence of the firing of each batch was delegated to one of the
painters--a most arduous and responsible task which often occupied as
much as fifteen days, for each piece had to pass to a fresh position
when a requisite degree of heat had been obtained.
The above summary will give some approximate idea of the complicated and
delicate processes involved in the fabrication of the _porcelaine de
France_ at the time when the ware that is now most prized by collectors
was being produced at the works. We must now give some account of the
forerunners--the soft-paste porcelains made at Saint-Cloud and at
Chantilly in the early part of the eighteenth century.
SAINT-CLOUD.--In 1695 the widow and children of Pierre Chicoineau (or
Chicanaux) petitioned the king for the sole privilege of making the
‘_véritable porcelaine de la même qualité, plus belle et aussi parfaite
et propice aux mêmes usages que la porcelaine des Indes et de la
Chine_.’ In granting the petition, the rights of the Poterat family of
Rouen are reserved; but it is stated that no porcelain had been made at
Rouen for several years. The earliest description, curiously enough, of
the manufacture of porcelain in France, is to be found in _An Account of
a Journey to Paris in the year 1698_, by Dr. Martin Lister. In speaking
of what he saw at the ‘potterie of Saint-Clou,’ Lister declares that the
painting of the ware surpassed that of the Chinese, nor was the glaze
inferior in whiteness and ‘smoothness of running without bubbles....
Again, the inward Substance and the Matter of the Pots was to me the
very same, firm and hard as Marble, and the self-same grain, on this
side vitrification. Further, the transparency of the Pots the very
same.’ After more than twenty-five years of experiment it was only, says
Dr. Lister, within the last three that the process had been brought to
perfection. We may therefore place the beginning of the porcelain of
Saint-Cloud about the year 1695.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIII._ 1--ROUEN, BLUE AND WHITE
2--SAINT-CLOUD, CELADON
3--SAINT-CLOUD, BLUE AND WHITE]
In the _Mercure Galant_ of October 1700 we hear of frequent visits of
princes, lords, and ambassadors to the works of ‘M. Chicanaux,’ above
all of the young Duchesse de Bourgogne, who ‘stopped her carriage at the
gate to see the manufacture of fine porcelain which has not its like in
all Europe.’ This reads very like a modern _réclame_, but it is
important as showing the interest already taken by great people in the
new ware.
At a later time the Saint-Cloud works came more directly under the
patronage of the Dukes of Orleans, both the regent and his son ‘Louis le
Dévot.’ It was then in the hands of Henri Trou, who had married
Chicoineau’s widow. Earlier Chicoineau pieces (1702-1712) bear as a mark
the sun of Louis XIV. roughly traced in blue (PL. D. 51). At a later
time, under the Trou _régime_, we find a roughly drawn T surmounted by
the letters S.-C. (PL. D. 52). The specimens of this ware--there are
plenty of them in the French museums and several at South
Kensington--are seldom of any size, and the decoration is generally
sparingly applied to the milk-white ground. In the earlier pieces the
_lambrequins_ borders in under-glaze blue carry on the tradition of the
seventeenth century renaissance style in use at Rouen, and we find
similar patterns moulded in low relief.[171] The moulded surface is
often covered with a scale-like pattern (PL. XXXIII.): with this we may
probably identify ‘the quilted china of Saint-Cloud,’ of which there was
a tea-service at Strawberry Hill. But it is rather the Oriental
influence that is generally predominant; and the white ware of Fukien,
decorated with sprigs of prunus blossom, is closely copied. Of special
interest are some very successful imitations of the _famille rose_. On a
_trembleuse_ saucer at South Kensington[172] the _rouge d’or_ is used
with great effect; the way in which the pink is gradated with the white
enamel shows full command of the materials. This saucer bears the T of
the Trou family as a mark, but we unfortunately do not know the exact
date when this mark was first introduced, and still less for how long it
was employed.[173]
LILLE.--A manufactory of porcelain was founded at Lille as early as the
year 1711. The founders, in their petition to the mayor and council of
the town, acknowledge that their aim was to follow in the wake of the
Chicoineau family of Saint-Cloud, the only place in Europe, they say,
where porcelain was made. At the same time they seize the occasion to
attack the head of the Rouen works, who, they affirm, has attempted to
palm off his inferior wares at Paris, to the prejudice of the real
Saint-Cloud porcelain. Some side-light is thus thrown on the rivalry of
the Poterat and Chicoineau families. In fact, the porcelain made at
Lille closely resembles the Saint-Cloud ware. We find this especially in
the pieces with a white ground sparely decorated with _lambrequins_ of
blue. It was, however, evidently made with less care, and we do not find
the milky paste which is so great a charm in the Saint-Cloud porcelain.
The mark, the letter L, stands for the town of Lille. This factory of
soft paste does not seem to have lasted more than twenty years. Late in
the century hard porcelain was made for a short time in this town, and
it is claimed that it was at Lille that coal was first used for the
firing of porcelain. There is a plate in the Sèvres Museum inscribed
‘_Faite à Lille en Flandre, cuite au charbon de terre_.’ The manager,
Leperre Durot, was unsuccessful, however, in an attempt to introduce his
new fuel at Paris. In 1786 the Dauphin (he was only five years old at
the time) became patron of the factory at Lille, and the mark for the
few remaining years of its existence was a dolphin crowned.
CHANTILLY.--We have seen how close to nearly every _Residenz-Stadt_ in
Germany there sprang up a porcelain manufactory under the patronage of
the prince. In somewhat similar way the fashion spread in France. Here
the head of each branch of the royal house either took some already
established factory under his protection, or promoted the setting up of
new works. At this time, I mean at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, it was the mark of a loyal subject and good citizen to send the
family plate to the melting-pot and to forward the resulting bullion to
the mint to be coined into money, in this following the example of the
king. This was the case above all in 1709, when Louis was in great want
of money. We are told that the Duc D’Antin, ‘the perfect courtier,’
after a sacrifice of this kind, ‘_courut à Paris choisir force
porcelaine admirable qu’il eut à grand marché_.’ So that, in the words
of Saint-Simon, the goldsmiths were being ruined, and the makers of
fayence and porcelain enriched. This fashion gave, of course, a great
stimulus to the establishment of new factories. Thus the head of the
great house of Condé became the patron of the works established in 1725
by Ciquaire Ciron at Chantilly. In the letters patent granted in 1735 we
are told ‘_Notre bien aimé Ciquaire Ciron nous a fait représenter que
depuis plus de dix ans il s’est appliqué à la fabrique de la porcelaine
pareille à celle qui se faisait anciennement au Japon_.’ The prince,
Louis Henri,[174] already possessed a remarkable collection of this
Oriental porcelain, and some sixty examples of this ware made
_anciennement au Japon_, what we now know as Kakiyemon, are still to be
seen in the Château of Chantilly.
The earlier porcelain of Chantilly is remarkable in this, that following
the example of the enamelled fayence of the day, it is coated with an
opaque stanniferous glaze. On this ground, which resembles closely that
of the earliest Japanese ware, the peculiar decoration of the Kakiyemon
porcelain is closely copied.[175] Indeed, the delicate yet spirited
handling of this decoration--I would point especially to two cylindrical
vases mounted in silver in the Fitzhenry collection (PL. XXXIV.)--is
something that we are quite unaccustomed to in European porcelain. It
will be noticed, however, that the over-glaze blue enamel is somewhat
heavy in tone, and has evidently given trouble to the decorator.
At a later time the tin enamel gave place to a vitreous glaze similar to
that used at Mennecy, and the decoration most in favour was a somewhat
poor underglaze blue. On such ware, especially on plates, we find the
well-known ‘Chantilly sprig,’ so often imitated on English porcelain.
This pattern is distinguished by a leaf, or rather bract, of peculiar
shape at the branching of the twigs, and the design would seem to be of
Persian origin. It is interesting to compare it with the very similar
sprigs often seen in the decoration
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIV._ CHANTILLY]
of the Medici porcelain. The shield of the Condé family is sometimes
found on plates of this ware, the ‘baton of cadency’ between the lilies
so reduced in size as to look like an accidental spot. The mark, a
hunting-horn, is carefully painted in red on the older pieces; later on,
it is found rapidly sketched in blue under the glaze[176] (PL. D. 53).
MENNECY-VILLEROY.--This time it is not a prince of the blood, but a
_très grand seigneur_, whose name we find associated with a group of
French porcelain. It was on the estate of the Duc de Villeroy, the son
of Louis XIV.’s notorious marshal, at Les Petites Maisons, near
Mennecy,[177] that Barbin began to make porcelain in the year 1735. The
ware he turned out is remarkable for a translucent body covered by a
brilliant and uniform glaze. Many kinds of decoration were tried by
Barbin and his successors during the forty years of the existence of
these works. This period of time well covers the culminating period of
soft-paste porcelain in France, and the Mennecy ware fairly represents
the school as a whole in its more modest efforts. The decoration with
scattered flowers (_bouquets de style français_) is perhaps the most
characteristic design on this ware, but more ambitious work in imitation
of Sèvres was attempted later. As at Saint-Cloud and at Chantilly, much
attention was given to the little daintily painted ‘toys’--patch-boxes,
cane-heads, and knife-handles--many of which were copied a little later
at Chelsea.
But the reputation of Mennecy rests above all upon its
_figurines_--little statuettes, generally brilliantly painted, though
some are covered with the plain white glaze only (PL. XXXV.). Others,
again, are in a biscuit of peculiar quality, and these last are at
times remarkably well modelled. The mark D. V. (PL. D. 54), doubtless
referring to the patron, was maintained up to the time of the removal of
the works to Bourg-la-Reine, near Sceaux, in 1773.
We have taken up the porcelain of Mennecy at this point, as the date of
its foundation is earlier than that of Vincennes. From its general
character, however, we might rather class it as a ‘younger sister’ of
Sèvres, while the other wares we have described, Saint-Cloud, Chantilly,
and Lille, form a distinct and earlier group by themselves. These latter
are distinguished from the later soft pastes of France, on the one hand,
by the predominance of designs either of Oriental origin or derived from
the French enamelled fayence of the seventeenth century; on the other,
by the restrained way in which the coloured decoration is applied, or
even by the total absence of colour, so that, as a whole, these wares
form an essentially white group of porcelain.
SMALLER FACTORIES OF SOFT PASTE.--There were already, in Paris, during
the early or Saint-Cloud period, some small private works where
soft-paste porcelain was made. We hear of one in the Faubourg St. Honoré
as early as 1722, belonging to the Veuve Chicoineau. De Réaumur, in
1739, mentions a factory in the Faubourg St. Antoine. Some other
porcelain works under the patronage of princes of the blood were erected
at a later date. The Duc de Penthièvre took a keen interest in the
porcelain made near to his _château_ at Sceaux, and this ware, first
made in 1751, is distinguished by its high finish and careful
decoration. So much cannot be said of the produce of the ducal kilns at
Orleans, where both fayence and soft-paste porcelain were made about the
middle of the century. Not long after, hard-paste porcelain was made at
Orleans by
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXV._ 1--SÈVRES, WHITE BISCUIT
2--MENNECY, GLAZED WHITE PORCELAIN]
Gérault, but it is doubtful whether all the pieces marked with the
Orleans label (of three points) (PL. D. 60) can be attributed to these
works rather than to the factory at Clignancourt. The works at Arras,
probably the last started with the object of making a soft-paste ware,
cannot be traced further back than 1771. Here the Demoiselles Delesseux,
with the support of M. de Calonne, manufactured blue and white ware in
competition with the neighbouring factory at Tournai.
TOURNAI.--Soft-paste porcelain was first made at Tournai in 1750, and
although the town is now in Belgium, the ware there manufactured in the
last century forms, with that made at Lille and Arras, a distinct group.
The mark of two swords in saltire and four small crosses (PL. D. 48) is
derived from the arms of Peterinck of Lille, the founder of the works.
At first a tower (PL. D. 47), from the town arms, was also used. Many
varieties of decoration were employed here both for blue and white and
enamelled ware. But before long the commercial spirit prevailed, and a
common ware was turned out in large quantities.
VINCENNES AND SÈVRES.--‘_La porcelaine de Sèvres est sans contredit la
plus belle qui existe._’ This is the dictum of no less an authority than
the late Baron Davillier, and we may doubtless accept it if we limit
ourselves to the porcelain of Europe. There can be no doubt but that the
work turned out by the royal porcelain works during the first fifteen or
twenty years of their existence takes an important, if not an essential,
place in the decorative art of the eighteenth century, and that, too, at
the best period of that art. As to the intrinsic artistic merit, if such
a thing exists, or even to the general decorative value of this ware,
compared, for instance, with the fayence of the Saracenic East or with
the porcelain of China and Japan, these are questions which we are
fortunately not called upon to answer here.
The _Porcelaines de France_, for that is the name given in the
eighteenth century to the ware produced under royal patronage, were
first made in the factory established in the riding-school at Vincennes,
and at the present day the works are within the confines of the park of
Saint-Cloud. It will, however, be convenient to include the whole series
under the name of Sèvres.[178]
Our knowledge of the technical side of the subject is derived, as we
have seen, from the report that Hellot presented to the king in 1753.
For the history of the foundation of the works and the selection of the
artists, we are chiefly dependent upon a memoir, written in 1781 for the
information of the Government, by Bachelier, an artist who had been
attached to the works as painter on porcelain since the year 1748.[179]
In this memoir we can trace the troubled history of the years of
ill-success and financial difficulties that preceded the final
establishment of the royal works at Sèvres--_Tantæ molis erat!_ ...
There were two names that we must always associate with this long
struggle: during the earlier period, at Vincennes, Orry de Fulvi, the
brother of the _contrôleur général de finance_; and after his death,
Madame de Pompadour. It is rather a shady story upon the whole, and at
the opening we are reminded of the adventures of the arcanist Ringler at
the various German courts. M. de Fulvi, who had long been interested in
experiments on the manufacture of porcelain, started at Vincennes with
the assistance of two worthless and drunken ‘experts’ (the equivalent
of the German ‘arcanists’) who had been tempted away from
Chantilly.[180] After repeated failures and much loss of money, the
recipes were stolen from one of those men by an astute and sober
assistant, one Gravant, to whom the whole charge of the mixing of the
materials was now confided.[181] Other workmen, and further secrets
relating to the preparation of the enamels were obtained from Chantilly
by means of a free expenditure of money, and a certain success was the
result. But meantime the funds of M. de Fulvi are exhausted, and resort
must be had to his brother, Philibert Orry, the finance minister. This
was in 1745, and we see in this step the first definite intervention of
the Government. A company was now formed, with important privileges for
thirty years, and by the influence of the minister, Hellot, from whose
report we have already quoted, was appointed chemical adviser,
Duplessis, the kings goldsmith (or rather silversmith--_argentier_) was
placed at the head of the mechanical department, and a few years later,
in 1748, Bachelier, to whom we are chiefly indebted for the history of
the works, became inspector of painting and gilding. Bachelier was not
of much note as an artist.[182] It was to his organising power and
energy, however, that the group of artists and sculptors who have given
such fame to the porcelain of Sèvres was first brought together.
On his appointment, says Bachelier, his first care was to abandon ‘_la
grossière imitation du Japon_’, and to furnish the _ateliers_ with
pictures, models, and prints, ‘_dans tous les genres, pour remplacer les
productions chinoises qu’on y copiait encore_.’[183]
Both M. de Fulvi and his brother died in 1751, the company was broken
up, and but for the energy and influence of a certain M. Hultz, of whom
nothing further is known, the manufacture would have come to an end. We
must remember that on the death of the finance minister, his former
enemy, Madame de Pompadour, practically took his place. Her power was at
that time at its height (she ‘reigned’ from 1745 to her death in 1764),
so that we may perhaps regard the M. Hultz of Bacheliers memoir as one
of the favourite’s ‘ghosts.’
It was certainly the influence of the Marquise de Pompadour that induced
Louis XV., in 1753, to sign the _arrêt_ by which the title of
_Manufacture Royale de Porcelaine_ was conferred on the establishment.
At the same time many important privileges were granted. The
establishment was now removed to Sèvres, where a plot of ground
containing some glass-works, the property of the favourite, was bought
for 66,000 livres, and the new factory set up in an adjacent domain that
had formerly belonged to the musician Lully. The king subscribed for a
quarter of the new capital. The troubles, however, were not yet ended:
the workshops were badly built and badly arranged. Finally, in 1759,
Louis took over all the shares of the company, which was at that time in
liquidation. A yearly grant of 96,000 livres secured the financial
position. In all these arrangements we see the hand of the Pompadour,
and still more in the keen way in which the business side of the
establishment was pushed. At the New Year a sale took place at
Versailles, in the palace. The king presided, and fixed the prices of
the porcelain. A large purchase of china on these occasions was a sure
way to royal favour and promotion.[184]
A good deal of uncertainty hangs over the nature of the early work
produced at Vincennes, and no definite mark has been assigned to the
factory, before the time when the permission to use the double L was
granted, in 1751 or 1753. When, however, the royal cipher occurs without
a year letter, there is some presumption in favour of a date previous to
the latter year (PL. D. 55).
We should infer from what Bachelier tells us that up to 1748 the designs
were chiefly derived from Oriental china. But in addition the following
forms and styles were in use in the pre-royal period at Vincennes:--
1. A rage for the production of artificial flowers, especially in plain
white ware, existed at one time, and when the Vincennes artists were
able to rival the Dresden flowers that had previously been imported,
from this department alone was a steady source of income obtained. The
flowers first produced were confined merely to small detached blossoms,
but in 1748 M. de Fulvi presented to the queen a trophy of white
porcelain which surpassed anything yet manufactured. On a base or
pedestal of white ware, mounted in gilt bronze, rises a small tree
completely covered with blossom of white porcelain, under which stand
three female figures of the same material. The whole trophy is about
three feet in height.[185] So again in 1750 we hear that the king had
ordered similar bouquets of flowers, ‘_peintes au naturel_,’ which were
to cost 800,000 livres! This for the famous Château de Bellevue, and for
Madame de Pompadour.[186]
2. Much of the porcelain made at Vincennes at this time (1740-50) was
decorated with scattered groups of flowers on a white ground, a style
then known as _fleurs de Saxe_. These flowers were often in high relief,
and in this case they formed a passage to the first group.
3. There exist certain small pieces, chiefly cups and saucers (of the
_trembleuse_ type, as usual at this time), with a ground of a deep blue.
A great vigour and depth is given to the colour (known later as _bleu du
roi_) by its somewhat irregular or mottled texture, a result, it is
said, of the manner in which it was painted on to the biscuit (it is an
underglaze colour) with a brush. We may note that the use of a dark
ground for porcelain was exceptional at this time in France. This _bleu
de Vincennes_ was imitated with some success by Sprimont at Chelsea.
Gravant (he who had the secret of the paste) had before 1753, so Hellot
tells us in his report, succeeded in making a paste much whiter than
that of Chantilly, so as to allow of a ‘_couverte crystalline et
parfaitement diaphane_’ in place of the opaque ‘_vernix de Fayance_’
(_sic_) used by Ciron at that factory. It is indeed important to
remember that before the works were removed from Vincennes, the soft
paste that we know as Sèvres had already reached its highest development
both as regards the materials and the decoration. The most
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVI._ SÈVRES]
beautiful and characteristic colours were already used with complete
mastery, and (certainly by the year 1753) the paintings of the _cartels_
had attained a delicacy and finish never surpassed in later times,--this
is at least true of certain classes of subjects, the _amorini_ and
wreaths of flowers, for instance. In proof of this I need only point to
certain pieces of turquoise in the Wallace collection (Gallery XV., Case
A.), above all to the _soupière_ (No. 7), modelled, no doubt, after a
silversmith’s design. If we compare such pieces to the porcelain of
Saint-Cloud and Chantilly, or to the somewhat tentative work turned out
at Vincennes itself but a few years earlier, it is difficult to account
for this rapid advance, especially at a time of change and financial
difficulties. This is certainly the most interesting period--(I mean the
years just at the middle of the century)--in the whole history of French
porcelain, and we must remember that the change came about precisely at
the time (1751) when Madame de Pompadour’s influence became predominant.
The free access to the royal factory--the workshops seem to have been
regarded at one time as a fashionable lounge--made the preservation of
any secret processes very difficult. Bachelier says that ‘_on vient s’y
promener comme dans les maisons royales_,’ and he complains bitterly of
the loss of time, the dirt, and the accidents caused by the throng of
people. A succession of edicts, one as early as the year 1747, was
issued, restricting the access of visitors.
When the difficulties connected with the paste and the decoration had
been surmounted, a demand arose for protection against the competition
of outside works. With this object a whole series of edicts, many of
them of a contradictory nature, was issued between the years 1750 and
1780. Of these the special aim was to prevent or hamper the production
of porcelain in other works, above all in those within a certain radius
of Paris, or failing that, at least to restrict the use of colour, and
especially of gilding, by such works as had to be tolerated.
At the time of the removal to Sèvres the staff consisted of more than a
hundred workmen. Duplessis, the silversmith of the king, was intrusted
with the modelling and with the general artistic direction, and Hellot,
as we have seen, was what we should now call ‘scientific adviser.’[187]
Bachelier complains that the nature of the paste and glaze was
unfavourable to the production of small figures, ‘_luisantes et
colorées_,’ like those of Saxony. He claims to have been the first--this
was as early as 1748--to recommend the use of white biscuit to reproduce
in porcelain, among other things, ‘some of the pastoral ideas of M.
Boucher,’ and this style, he tells us, ‘had a great success up to the
time when M. Falconet, to whom the department was intrusted in 1757,
introduced a more noble style, one more generalised and less subject to
the evolution of fashion.’ Falconet was carried off to Russia in 1766,
to execute for Catherine II. the great statue of Peter the Great, and
Bachelier then took his place. It was under Falconet that the best work
was produced in this department, although at a later date such
well-known names as Robert le Lorrain, Pajou, Clodion, Pigalle, and
Houdon are found upon the books of the Sèvres works. No biscuit
statuettes of _pâte tendre_ were made after the year 1777.
The models after which the vases and other objects were designed--and
each year some fresh form was introduced--are still preserved at Sèvres.
We can trace in them, as in the mountings of the contemporary
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII._ SÈVRES PORCELAIN]
furniture, the passage from the _haute rocaille_ of the fifties to the
simpler forms in favour at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI.
The fashion of encasing the porcelain of China in metal mounts--for this
the large monochrome pieces were preferred--had come in at an earlier
period. The contorted forms of the gilt metal undoubtedly bring out by
contrast the simple outlines and smooth surfaces of the crackle and
celadon vases. In the Jones collection at South Kensington there are
some superbly fine examples of this collocation of French and Chinese
work. During the sixties and later it became the fashion to combine the
ormolu and other kinds of metal-work with the Sèvres porcelain in many
new ways, and the _pendules_ of the time show ingenious combinations of
the two materials in endless variety. It must be borne in mind that the
simpler forms that we associate with the reign of Louis XVI. were
already asserting themselves several years before the death of his
predecessor.
If we examine the choicer pieces in any collection of Sèvres china, we
find that the date-marks range within a very small interval of time--a
few years on either side of 1760. This narrow limit for the best work is
well exemplified both in the Jones collection and at Hertford House. We
shall return to this point when describing the turquoise and rose
grounds of this time.
Once established at Sèvres under direct royal patronage, the principal
efforts of the staff were directed to the designing and the execution of
elaborate dinner-services, destined to be presented in turn to the
various crowned heads of Europe. As early as 1754 a service was made for
Maria Theresa, _la Reine-Impératrice_. In 1758 a service with a green
ground and figures, flowers, and birds in cartels was commanded by Louis
XV. for presentation to the King of Denmark; in 1760 a _service de
table_ of two hundred and eighty-one pieces is presented to the
Elector-Palatine Karl Theodor, the porcelain enthusiast of Frankenthal.
In 1764, and again in 1772 and 1779, the _Ministre d’État_ Bertin
forwarded to the Chinese Emperor Kien-lung, through the medium of the
Jesuit missionaries, presents of Sèvres porcelain.[188] In 1768 and 1769
a further grand _service de table, fond lapis caillouté_[189] is
presented to the Danish king; in 1775 it is the turn of a Spanish
princess, and in 1777 of the emperor. In 1778 the king sends to the
Sultan of Morocco a tea-service, and at the same time presents other
pieces of china to the Moorish ambassador. In the same year the Empress
Catherine ordered at Sèvres the famous service of seven hundred and
forty-four pieces, _bleu céleste_ (_i.e._ turquoise) ground, decorated
with _camées incrustés_. The flowers in this set were painted by
Taillandier, and the gilding executed by Vincent and Le Guay. There is a
plate from this service at South Kensington: on the centre the letter E,
formed of minute flowers, and the Roman numeral II, stand for Ekaterina
the Second. To this set belong also the three large _brûle-parfums_
vases at Hertford House, and there are other pieces in private
hands.[190] The empress disputed the price (328,188 livres) demanded for
the service, and a long diplomatic correspondence on the point has been
preserved. M. Davillier gives some details of eight other royal services
made between this time and the end of the century, among them one with
green ground, for Prince Henry of Prussia (1784), of which
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII._ SÈVRES]
several of the pieces were jewelled (_ornées d’émaux_), and in 1788 a
_grand service de table_ with vases, cups, pictures, and busts sent to
Tippoo Saib, Sultan of Mysore.
It is usual to distinguish the different services, _cabarets_ or
_garnitures_, by the colour of the ground which is maintained throughout
the set. Thus we find the _fond lapis_ mentioned above and the _fond
vert_, a peculiar shade of green very much admired at the time and often
repeated in the lacquered furniture and even in the panels of a whole
apartment.
We have already spoken of the TURQUOISE BLUE, but the colour is so
important that we will quote more fully the somewhat enigmatical account
of it given by Hellot. ‘The _bleu du roi_ ground, called before the
Christmas fêtes of 1753 _bleu ancien_ (Oriental turquoise by daylight,
emerald or malachite by artificial light), with which his majesty has
been so satisfied, is composed as follows....’ We are then told that we
should purchase at the Sieur Moniac, in the Rue Quincampoise, opposite
to, etc.;--but it is needless to follow these details--in fact I only
quote a few words as a sample of Hellot’s innumerable recipes for
colours. This blue enamel, for it is an enamel, and not painted _sous
couverte_ like the old Vincennes blue, is composed of ‘_aigue-marine_’
(some preparation of copper) three parts, Gravant’s glaze one part, and
of minium one and a third parts. The ingredients are melted together, _à
très grand feu_, and the resultant glass finely powdered. ‘This powder
is dusted through a silk sieve, upon the _mordant_ that has been applied
to the surface of the already glazed porcelain. The piece is then heated
in the “painter’s stove” (the muffle). The first layer of colour comes
out sometimes crackled, and always irregular (_mal unie_). To make the
enamel uniform, the piece is again coated and again passed through the
painter’s stove.’ Not only the strength and quality of the enamel, but
its tint also, vary much, even in pieces dating from the best period;
some examples tend more to green than others. In the more brilliant and
intense examples of the _bleu céleste_, to give the colour its old or
one of its old names, the ground on close examination appears to be more
or less mottled, darker clots, as it were, floating about in a lighter
medium. Indeed some such ‘texture’ seems to be necessary to bring out
the full effect and brilliancy in the case of other glazes and
transparent enamels on porcelain, and to its absence the dull and
‘uninteresting’ aspect of much of our modern porcelain may be
attributed.
ROSE POMPADOUR.--We have seen that the various shades of pink derived
from gold (see the note on p. 284) had for some time been used in the
decoration of porcelain, but that the recipes for them were regarded as
precious trade secrets. The _rose carnée_, or _Pompadour_[191] (often
wrongly called _rose du Barry_), belongs to this class. The credit of
its first successful employment as a uniform ground-colour is probably
due to the chemist Hellot.[192] This colour was in use at Sèvres for
only a short period of years, say between 1753 and 1763. The dated
specimens in the Wallace collection range between 1754 and 1759. One is
almost tempted to associate its sudden disappearance with some whim of
Madame de Pompadour; perhaps having in her possession nearly all that
had been made, she wished to ‘corner the market.’ The manufacture seems
to have ceased _before_ her death (1764), and afterwards the
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIX._ SÈVRES]
secret was lost. The _rose carnée_ ground is often associated with one
of apple-green, but the combination is not a very pleasing one.
Great attention has always been paid to the GILDING at Sèvres. When
applied heavily to the handles and feet of vases, it replaces, in some
measure, the ormolu mounts. So, when surrounding the little pictures
painted on the _cartels_ of vases and bowls, or on the centre of plates,
this gilding represents in position and design the gold frame of the
period. At the time of the reorganisation of the works in 1753 we find,
along with Bachelier and Duplessis, a certain Frère Hippolyte, a
Benedictine monk, mentioned as the possessor of secret processes of
gilding, and he was well paid for his periodical visits to the works.
Bachelier, writing in 1781, has a note protesting against the excessive
employment of gold. The prohibition of its use at other porcelain
factories at this time was based, he says, on ‘economic grounds,’ that
the metal might not be lost for commerce. ‘This enormous expenditure of
gold,’ he protests, ‘is the more revolting, inasmuch as it is in bad
taste.’ Bachelier distinguishes the ‘_or bruni en effet_’ from the ‘_or
bruni en totalité_.’ By the use of the first, in opposition both to the
unburnished and to the plain polished gold, it was intended to imitate
chiselled metal (the ormolu mounts), and this method of burnishing, we
are told, should be confined to large vases which are not subjected to
any wear and tear by cleaning or otherwise. The gold, in all cases, was
simply sprinkled on without the admixture of any flux, and the
burnishing was carried out chiefly by women in a special department of
the works. This burnishing was effected _au clou_, that is, by means of
a stump of iron inserted at the end of a stick. Agate burnishers were
not introduced till a later period. Great pressure was required in the
earlier method, resulting in deeply incised lines, and there is less
uniformity of surface than where the agate is used.
The JEWELLED SÈVRES has never found much favour in France, and the only
name the French have for this decoration--_porcelaine ornée d’émaux_--is
not very distinctive. A transparent, glassy, or sometimes an opaque
enamel of very brilliant tint is applied in the form of little beads
standing out in relief and set in gold mountings. This application of
‘_appliqués_ gems in chased gold setting,’ unless used with great
delicacy and moderation, produces a tawdry and overloaded effect, above
all when applied upon coloured grounds. But when these little
‘paste-jewels’ are set upon the soft white of the Sèvres _pâte tendre_
the result is sometimes very pleasing. On a cup and saucer belonging to
Mr. Currie, now at South Kensington, the ruby and turquoise jewels are
connected by branches of gold overlaid with a transparent green enamel
(PL. XL.). On the other hand, on a large ewer and basin of turquoise,
with a decoration of gold, in the ‘Londonderry Cabinet’ at Hertford
House, which has the date-letter for 1768, the original design is
capriciously overlaid by a series of jewelled chains which (if we are to
trust the date-mark on the ewer) must certainly have been added at a
later time. Indeed the manufacture of this jewelled ware seems to have
been confined to the years 1780-86.
When a school of painting was first established at Sèvres, it was to the
fan-painters and to the miniature-painters in enamel that Bachelier
turned for assistance, and we can detect the mannerisms peculiar to
these two schools in the decoration of some of the earlier pieces made
at Sèvres.
MARKS.--By the royal decree of 1753, from which
[Illustration: _PLATE XL._ JEWELLED SÈVRES]
we have already quoted, it was ordered that all pieces should be marked
with the well-known royal cipher, the double L, and that a letter-mark
indicating the year should be added (PL. D. 56). The single letters of
the alphabet carry us from 1753 to 1776; after that double letters were
used till 1793, when the king’s initial was replaced by the letters R.
F., with the addition of the word Sèvres. A mark of this latter kind was
in use till the end of the century, after which time no more soft paste
was made.
Each artist marked his work with a monogram or a private sign, often
suggested by a play upon the syllables of his name, as in the case of
the canting arms of heraldry. For example, ‘2000’ (vingtcents) was
adopted by Vincent, the famous gilder; a branch of a tree by Dubois;
and, more strangely still, a triangle, the sign of the Trinity, by an
artist named Dieu. These marks were placed underneath, or by the side
of, the royal cipher. The marks of more than a hundred artists have been
identified from the records kept at Sèvres--painters of flowers,
garlands, landscapes, marines, genre-subjects, and finally gilders. A
complete list of these men, with their marks, may be found in Garnier,
Chaffers, and other writers on the subject.
The manufacture of true kaolinic porcelain was begun in 1769, but the
soft paste continued to be made for another thirty years, side by side
with the new ware. It was not till the year 1804 that it was finally
abandoned by Brongniart, the new director. He found the soft-paste ware
unsuitable for the big pieces now ordered by the Imperial Government.
The paste was difficult to work, the preparation was expensive, and the
dust formed both from the paste and from the lead glaze was injurious to
the health of the workmen. One or two attempts have since been made at
Sèvres to revive the old ware, but they have fallen through in every
case.
Brongniart, in 1804, to provide funds for the impoverished works and to
pay the arrears of wages to the workmen, threw on the market the large
stock of plain white soft paste that had accumulated in the magazine.
Now at that time there were in Paris many skilled porcelain painters,
some of them ex-employés at Sèvres, and others, men who made a living by
painting on the plain ware sent from Limoges and other factories. These
‘chambrelans’ (they painted at home, _en chambre_, and corresponded to
our English ‘chamberers’) were now employed by the dealers who had
eagerly bought up the ware that Brongniart had parted with.[193] They
painted and gilt this white ware in imitation of the Sèvres porcelain of
the best period so successfully that the services they turned out have
found their way into royal collections. This ware, in fact, forms a
group by itself, quite apart from the later imitations of the _pâte
tendre_, which, in every degree of merit and demerit, are now found in
the china-shops of Europe and America. M. Garnier points out three signs
by which this pseudo-Sèvres may be recognised: 1. The green prepared
from the newly introduced chromium is of a warm yellowish tint, and
displays none of the submetallic tints so often to be seen in enamels
coloured by copper, as in the _famille verte_ of China. 2. The gold on
this bastard ware, burnished with an agate polisher, differs in quality
of surface from the old gilding worked _au clou_. 3. The date-marks and
painters’ monograms were copied at hazard from the old pieces--at that
time no list of these marks had been made public--so that, for example,
the monogram of a gilder may be found on a piece decorated in colours
only.