Fig. 84.—Rouen Faience.
The paste of the Rouen faience is stronger than that of Delft, and the pieces I have seen show a reddish clay through the breaks of the enamel.
Many of the paintings indicate much taste and skill. It seems to me that this work is marked by more originality, and by a finer perception of the fit and the beautiful, than any other French pottery. The pieces shown in Figs. 82 and 83, as far as engravings can do it, prove this. They do not show the variety and the richness of color which distinguish much of the best work.
The early Rouen work, in a considerable degree following the Delft, was painted, as some suppose, by men brought from there. Imitations of the Chinese at one time were in vogue; and a good deal of work was done in blue—en camaïeu—in one color only. But the colored or polychrome Rouen is most distinctive, most brilliant, and most desired. One of the styles most sought for is termed à la corne, showing cornucopias combined with flowers and birds. It is very effective. The example engraved is a beautiful plate from Mr. Wales’s collection at Boston ([Fig. 84]). Many pieces of this ware are in existence, and they are found in all the museums and in many private collections of Europe. Mrs. Moses Ives, at Providence, has some perfect examples, gathered by her from old houses in Rhode Island. Her belief is, that they got into Rhode Island from ships captured by privateers and brought into Newport, where their cargoes were sold and scattered. It seems probable.
Moustiers.—Within the last twenty-five years the faience of Moustiers has been separated from that of other places in France, into which it had once been merged.
The little town in the department of the Lower Alps seems to have had a fabrique as early as 1686, when the records mention the name of Antoine Clerissy as maître fayensier. Two other names are known as master-potters of that town—Olery and Roux. All these made ornamental work of an excellent class, some of which is much valued.
Three styles of decoration are assigned to these potters. The earliest is recognized as being painted in blue camaieu (in one color), with subjects—hunting-scenes, escutcheons and armorial bearings, country-scenes, figures of the time of Louis XIV., etc. Most of these are assigned to Clerissy.
The second style runs from about 1700 to 1745. “The specimens of this period are better known to amateurs, and not so rare; they are also decorated in blue camaieu, with highly-finished and gracefully-interlaced patterns, among which are Cupids, satyrs and nymphs, terminal figures, garlands of flowers, masks, etc.; and canopies resting on consoles, or brackets, from which hangs drapery bordered or framed with foliage and hatched spaces; mythological personages, vases of flowers, and other designs, being frequently introduced; the centre subjects are classical or champêtre figures in costume of the time, sometimes coats-of-arms. Some of the faience of this period is painted in cobalt-blue in the Chinese style, which M. Davillier attributes to Pol Roux, and refers to a similar plate in the Sèvres collection bearing the arms of le grand Colbert.” In this style there is evidently a following of the maiolicas of Italy in what is known as the Raffaelesque ware. But that was never, I believe, painted in blue.