This Sèvres porcelain is entirely devoid of the broad decorative treatment and rich full colour of any of the great kinds of fine pottery or porcelain. Artistically considered, it has no place beside the triumphs of the Chinese or Persian potters, or of the Italian majolists. Its shapes are too formal, and are not sufficiently imbued with a sense of the qualities of the material. The ground colours defy every natural tendency of pottery colour for they are even, flawless and mechanical, with none of the palpitating richness that comes so naturally from the potter’s processes. The paintings, whether of flowers, birds or figure-subjects, are extraordinarily skilful regarded as miniatures, but as examples of pottery decoration they cannot be compared to the swift, apparently careless, brushwork of the great masters of earlier times. So pronounced was the demand of the period for smooth even finish that such ground colours as gros-bleu and bleu de roi, where the colour naturally came varied and uneven, were subsequently decorated with small diapers or lines of gold in the form of œil de perdrix or vermicelle, so as to produce a more regular and even effect. The most elaborate and costly of all the varieties of old Sèvres is what is known as “jewelled Sèvres,” which is richly sown with imitation jewels, such as turquoises, pearls and rubies, closely resembling the real stones. These imitation jewels were in every case set in beautifully chased mountings of gold, and in the museum at Sevres are to be found examples of the punches and other tools used in making these mounts. On account of the enormous expense involved in the production of such costly triumphs of skill, examples of jewelled Sèvres are rare even in the best collections, but the English student is fortunate in the fact that the Wallace collection contains a considerable number of them.
| Sèvres Potters’ marks, 1753 and 1772. |
Many reasons—the prestige attaching to a Royal Manufactory, the knowledge that the porcelain was produced regardless of cost, the mechanical perfection of its colours, gilding and decoration, as well as the fact that the glassy porcelain was abandoned as too costly and risky after about 1780—have all conspired to raise the prices which modern collectors are prepared to pay for fine examples of vieux Sèvres. It is doubtful whether even the prices paid for paintings by old masters have advanced so rapidly as those paid for Sèvres porcelain of the best period. In the ’seventies of the 19th century it was deemed worthy of remark that a sum of £10,000 should have been paid at public auction for three old Sèvres vases; thirty years later one such piece would probably fetch the same price. It should be added that the extravagant prices now paid for Sèvres porcelain, which is much more a triumph of technical than of artistic skill, have led to an extensive system of “faking” and even forging specimens which are purchased at high prices by amateurs.
Beautiful as the old Sèvres porcelain was, those who were responsible for its manufacture could not fail to recognize that the porcelain made at Meissen and other German factories was both harder and whiter in substance, more truly resembling the oriental porcelain in every respect. It was also known that these German porcelains were not so difficult, and therefore so costly to manufacture as the French, and all these causes combined to make the directorate of Sèvres unremitting in their efforts to discover in France natural materials analogous to those used by the German and Chinese potters. Père d’Entrecolles, the famous Jesuit missionary, had forwarded to France long before an account of the methods used by the Chinese, as well as samples of the materials they employed; and after many years’ research Millot and Macquer discovered the precious materials at St Yrieix near Limoges (see Auscher, History of French Porcelain, pp. 77-81). The first experimental pieces of this French porcelain, similar in material to the German and Chinese, appear to have been made about 1769; but it was some years after this before the manufacture of the new product was firmly established, and then to the end of the 18th century more and more of the hard porcelain and less of the glassy porcelain was made at Sèvres. Speaking broadly, we might say that after 1780 comparatively little of the original French porcelain was made in France; and from that time to this practically all French porcelain has been of the same type as the German porcelain, viz. made with china clay and felspathic rock. This technical change in the nature of the materials had a profound influence on the artistic qualities of French porcelain, and the change was doubtless accentuated by the neo-classical rage which followed on the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The influence of antique vase shapes and of modern renderings of Greek motives in design spread over Europe like a plague, and whether in France, Germany or England the last quarter of the 18th and the first quarter of the 19th century mark a definite period in pottery design and decoration. The introduction of hard-paste porcelain rendered the manufacture of large vases and other pieces possible; and after 1780 we find the manufactory at Sèvres engaged in the production of enormous vases 5 or 6 ft. in height, a manufacture which has been continued there to this day. About the same time, too, we find the first production of large plaques or slabs of porcelain on which copies of well-known pictures were painted in enamel colours. The earliest of these slabs were in soft-paste porcelain, but in this material it was only possible to make them of quite modest dimensions; with the introduction of hard-paste porcelain very large slabs were manufactured, and a series of these are to be seen in the museum at Sèvres.
The most artistic of all the productions of Sèvres are undoubtedly the “biscuit” figures and groups. These were modelled with great skill by many of the best French sculptors of the day, such as Pajou, Pigalle, Clodion, La Rue, Caffieri, Falconet, Boizot, Julien, Le Riche, &c. The best of these Sèvres “biscuits” have a real artistic value which places them in a class quite apart from the German porcelain figures made at Meissen, Frankenthal and Höchst.
Paris.—Although during the reign of Louis XV. many privileges and prerogatives had been given to the Sèvres manufactory, such as the exclusive right to gild or paint in colours on porcelain, the breakdown of the monarchical régime, which was rapidly accelerated after the accession of Louis XVI., led to the establishment in Paris and its environs of a number, of factories for the production of hard-paste porcelains more or less in open rivalry with the royal manufactory of Sèvres. In order that the royal edicts might be more easily evaded, most of these factories were placed under the patronage of one of the French princes of the blood or even of Queen Marie Antoinette. There is little need to dwell on the doings of these Parisian factories, but the productions of the best of them, such as those of Clignancourt (patronized by Monsieur, the king’s eldest brother); Rue Thiroux (patronized by Queen Marie Antoinette); Rue de Bondy (patronized by the duc d’Angoulême), compare not unfavourably with those of Sèvres itself.
It is impossible to do more than mention the other important French factories at Mennecy, Sceaux, Bourg-la-Reine, Strassburg, Niederviller, Marseilles, Limoges and Caen. In the disastrous years of the French revolution (between 1789 and 1800), such of these factories as had survived came to an untimely end, even the royal factory at Sèvres passing through a kind of lingering death between 1792 and 1801, and it was not until Napoleon decided to revive the glories of Sèvres that modern French porcelain really came into being.
Just as the manufacture of German porcelain spread into Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, &c., we find the manufacture of a glassy porcelain analogous to the early French arising in Belgium, Italy, Spain and England. The materials and methods were so like those used in France that it would be ridiculous to claim for them an independent origin, even were we unable to prove by documentary evidence that workmen trained in the French factories had migrated into those countries.
| Capo-di-Monte Potters’ marks; 1736, 1759, 1780. |
Italy.—In Italy we have the factories at Le Nove near Bassano (1762-1825); Doccia near Florence (founded in 1735 by the marchese Carlo Ginori, and still carried on by the same family); and Capo-di-Monte near Naples (1736-1820); with minor factories like those at Vinovo, Treviso, and the Volpato factory at Rome. The most important of these were the factories at Doccia and Capo-di-Monte. The porcelain made at Doccia was famous for its soft translucent texture, so that it lent itself beautifully to the production of white glazed porcelain figures resembling in quality the white pieces of Fu-kien.