Indeed, within this year I have seen some pieces of Sèvres painting, such as I fancy have never been done there before, and which can hardly be excelled; in which the artist ceases to be a copyist, abandons himself to the imagination, and produces work which gratifies the highest faculty. Somebody, then, has broken away from traditions and academic rules.
Not only were the early painters ranked as artists, but designers and modelers of vases and other pieces had high rank and high pay, so much so that their names were and are attached to their productions; as, for example, vase Clodion, vase Duplessis, vase Falconnet, etc. I may say here that elaborate and beautiful as many of them certainly are, the Sèvres vases, inspired as they too often are by that expression of art so acceptable to Louis XIV. and XV., are so decorated, scrolled, and worked, that they create a sense of surfeit in many minds.
In Figs. 133, 134, and 135, we have three excellent examples of this work which may really be called magnificent. They have all the qualities which characterize the elaborate work of Sèvres. The size and elaborateness of these force them into the collections of emperors and kings, and here and there into the fine museums of the world, where they are to be seen of all men.
Fig. 133 is a superb covered vase, enameled most elaborately and exquisitely, in the best of what may be termed a Renaissance decoration, which had its birth in Italy. The masks and floating figures suggest a delicate reminiscence of Pompeii and the luxury and decadence of those Greek Romans, which there reached a full development, and which remain to us when all of Rome is in ruin, preserved by the ashes of Vesuvius through these nineteen centuries.
The vase, Fig. 134, is the largest of all, reaching some forty inches in height.
Fig. 135 shows us a superb vase, called “Cuve ovale Ducereau.” In this vase the artist has closely approximated to the form of some of the old Greek vases, but the decoration is more striking and elaborate.
