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124
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124. A Meissen part table service decorated with La Fontaine…
124
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124. A Meissen part table service decorated with La Fontaine…
Estimate €7,000 - €10,000
Voluntary lot
Description
124. A Meissen part table service decorated with La Fontaine's Fables, circa 1775-80
Each piece painted after La Fontaine, titled in French in purple script on the reverse, the gilt-edged rims with a border of green brickwork edged with gilt scrollwork and trailing flowers, comprising: A small oval tureen and cover (28cm across handles); 14 dinner plates (24cm diam.); 1 smaller tureen stand (34 cm across handles); 1 larger tureen stand (43cm across handles); 1 very large circular serving dish (43cm diam.); 2 smaller circular serving dishes (26cm diam.); 2 sauceboats (23cm long); 6 soup plates (22.5cm diam.); 1 small deep plate (21cm diam.); 1 lozenge-shaped dish (29cm across); 1 square dish or compotier (28.5cm diam.), crossed swords marks and asterisk in underglaze-blue, the plates with gilt "N." to footrim, the lozenge-shaped dish with gilt "S." (32)
Provenance:
The Hon. Gavin Astor, Hever Castle, Kent, sold at Christie's London, 7 July 1969, lot 245 (part)
The designs for this service derive from the engravings of Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1715-1790) after the original drawings of Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755). Oudry, court painter to Louis XV and director of the Gobelins and Beauvais tapestry manufactories, began an ambitious series of illustrations for La Fontaine's Fables in the late 1720s, some 30 years after the publication of the series. In 1751, the financier Jean-François de Montenault acquired the drawings with the intention of publishing them. Cochin was commissioned to prepare intermediary drawings after the originals, which he subsequently engraved himself. These were published as Fables choisies, mises en vers in four volumes, issued in Paris between 1755 and 1759.
According to the Meissen manufactory records, the painter Carl Gottlob Pilster decorated 32 plates depicting fables, titled on the underside, in March 1776 ("32 Teller mit Fabeln, auswendig mit Schrift geschrieben").
A part-service comprising 11 plates with the same decoration, possibly from the same service, was sold at Christe's London, 20 November 2020, lot 438.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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