The girl leaning against the donkey besides two paniers loaded with minutely modelled vegetables on a pierced rockwork base. The fine quality of detail achieved in these figures is a feature of Tournai porcelain that is not matched in any other soft-paste porcelain of the 18th Century.
Soil de Moriamé illustrates the example from the Mme Desurmont Collection in the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels and (unusually for him) describes it as a Très jolie sculpture.[i]
On 3rd April 1751 François-Joseph Peterinck (1719–1799) was granted a monopoly on porcelain production lasting thirty years by Prince Charles de Lorraine, then Governor General of the Netherlands, on behalf of Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria, his sister–in–law.[ii]
The enterprise began figure production as early as 1754 and attracted two notable sculptors. One was the Parisian Nicholas–Joseph–François Gauron (circa 1736– 1773) who had worked at the Mennecy factory, before his arrival at Tournai at some point between 1754 and 1758. Gauron left the factory in 1764 and went on to work for ceramic factories in Brussels, Weesp, Liege, and from 1770 in England at William Duesbury’s Chelsea and Derby works.[iii] The other recorded sculptor employed at Tournai was Antoine or Antoine-Frans Gilis (1702–1781), who had been apprenticed by his father to the sculptor Michiel van der Voort in Antwerp in 1717. Admitted to the guild of St Luke in Valenciennes in 1724, he later opened his own workshop. Gilis was engaged by Peterinck in November 1756 along with his son, a painter, to establish an academy to improve the artistic skills of his workers (later the Académie des Beaux–Arts de Tournai), and he worked at the factory until 1764.[iv]
Our figure could be by Gauron, but a number of other skilled hands seem to have been at work as well.
Another example of the same figure can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum (acc. No C.803-1936)
Condition:
Top of backrest of saddle restored. Rein lacking.
References:
Dumortier and Habets 2015
Claire Dumortier and Patrick Habets, Porcelaine de Tournai, Scènes galantes et décors historiés, (Brussels, 2015)
Hénault 1898
Maurice Hénault, Antoine Gilis sculpteur et peintre 1702-1781, Paris, 1898
Soil de Moriamé 1937
Chevalier Soil de Moriamé, La Manufacture Impériale et Royale de Porcelaine de Tournay, (Paris, 1937)
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[i] Soil de Moriamé 1937, P. 331 -332, no. 607.
[ii] Charles was brother-in-law to the empress twice over, his elder brother Francis was married to Marie Theresa
and Charles was married to her younger sister.
[iii] Dumortier and Habets 2015, p. 32.
[iv] Maurice Hénault, Antoine Gilis sculpteur et peintre 1702-1781, Paris, 1898.
Price: £4,500
