A PAIR OF VINCENNES OR SEVRES BISCUIT FIGURES

A PAIR OF VINCENNES OR SEVRES BISCUIT FIGURES

Of La Bergère Assise and Le Porteur de Mouton

Circa 1754-66

21.0 and 21.5 cm high

She incised mark ‘F’ for Falconet, he with an X

Probably modelled by Jean-Baptiste Defernex, after François Boucher

 

The incised ‘F’ indicates that La Bergère Assise was made under the supervision of Étienne-Maurice Falconet who joined the Manufacture de Sèvres at the age of forty and directed the sculpture studio from 1757 to 1766 when he left for Russia to work for Catherine the Great.

The terracotta models for these groups are preserved at Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique, and published by Tamara Préaud et Guilhem Scherf, La Manufacture des Lumières, la sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution, Dijon, 2015, pp. 298-299.

For similar models see Emile Bourgeois, Les Biscuits de Sèvres, pl. 1, nos.111 et 510;

Condition:
She with flower in her left hand partly lacking and with small firing crack to base, both with very small chips in places

Provenance:
Collection of Nadine Ortiz-Patiño
Thierry de Maigret, Drouot-Richelieu – 6 June 2018

References:
Emile Bourgeois & Georges Lechevallier-Chevignard, Le biscuit de Sèvres. Recueil des Modèles de la Manufacture de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle, 1913, pl. 1, nos. 111 and 510
Tamara Préaud et Guilhem Scherf, La Manufacture des Lumières, la sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution, Dijon, 2015, pp. 298-299

These items have been sold