Bleu céleste, a turquoise blue, from copper.
Rose Pompadour, improperly called Rose du Barri in England.
Violet pensée, a rare and beautiful violet.
Jonquille, a rich canary.
Vert pomme, a delicious apple-green.
Vert pré, a bright grass-green.
Rouge de fer, a brilliant red.
These are among the most famous colors used to cover the ground or body of the finest vases, the reserved spaces being filled with the rarest paintings. In addition to these perfect colors, gilding of the heaviest kind was used—often too freely. To glorify the work still more, what are termed jewels were applied in rows, or singly, of many colors; but pearls and rubies were most in use.
The rose Pompadour, or rose du Barri, has, within the last twenty years, become most in vogue, so that at the Bernal sale, in 1856, a pair of vases of this color, painted with groups of Cupids in medallions, was purchased by the Marquis of Bath at eighteen hundred and fifty guineas. An English collector, of moderate views, told me he proposed to purchase a pair of vases of this color, some twelve inches high, at a sale at Christie’s, some five years since, if he could do so for, say, one hundred pounds sterling. The first bid was one thousand pounds, and they were knocked down at sixteen hundred and fifty guineas.
The variety and splendor of these vases de luxe are great. They are to be seen in most of the collections of Europe, and, to some extent, in America; but their great cost, and the fact that they are so rarely offered for sale here, make them quite uncommon in the United States.