Sèvres - Lot 232

Sèvres Pair of soft-paste porcelain topette buckets from the service of Prince Louis-René-Edouard de Rohan-Guéménée with polychrome decoration of birds on shrubs and terraces in landscapes contained in reserves surrounded by branches trimmed with oak leaves in gold on a celestial blue ground; under the handles the monogram LPR in gold for Louis, Prince de Rohan. Unmarked. The painting attributed to Antoine-Joseph Chappuis (active 1761-1787) 18th century, circa 1771. H. 14.9 cm, L. 19.9 cm. PROVENANCE - Louis-René-Edouard, Prince de Rohan-Guéménée, - probably collection of Prince Anatole Demidoff, sale of the collections of the Palazzo di San Donato in Florence, Pillet-Mannheim, Paris, March 23, 1870, lots 126-127 - possibly Earl of Dudley collection, Himley Hall, Dudley, Staffordshire, England - Former collection of Baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911) and Baron Robert de Rothschild (1880-1946) - by descent, former collection of Madame B. (Mme Joseph Benvenuti, née Diane de Rothschild), PIASA sale, Paris, June 11, 1997, lot 38. BIBLIOGRAPHY Carl C. Dauterman, The Wrightsman Collection, Porcelain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. IV, 1970, no. 109, pp. 261-271. David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the 18th Century, Little Berkhamsted, 2015, vol. 2, pp. 479-481, no. 72-1. Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue, French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London, 2009, p. 622, n° 158. These topette buckets were part of the dessert service commissioned by Louis-René-Édouard, Prince de Rohan-Guéménée (1734-1803) in 1771, the year of his appointment as ambassador extraordinary to the Viennese court by Louis XV. The scandals associated with the future cardinal failed to win him the favor of Empress Maria Theresa, and led to the enmity of the future king and queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Shortly after Louis XV's death in 1774, Rohan was ordered to return to France, where, despite a cold reception, he was appointed Grand Chaplain of France, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church (1778) and then Bishop of Strasbourg and the Holy Roman Empire in 1779. The Sèvres service was delivered by the Manufacture de Sèvres on September 7, 1772 at a cost of 20,772 livres, and comprised 368 pieces, each plate costing 36 livres and the topette buckets, of which there were 6 in the service, costing 120 livres each. The Prince de Rohan moved to Vienna on January 6, 1772, and the service was delivered nine months later. A large part of the service was purchased in the 19th century by Prince Anatole Demidoff, for 70,000 francs (see Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato, exhibition, The Wallace Collection, London, 1994, p. 71). The Palais de San Donato collection was auctioned by Pillet and Mannheim in March 1870, and included 172 pieces from the service of Cardinal de Rohan, including three topette buckets. The service was then purchased by William, 1st Earl of Dudley, and subsequently passed into the hands of the English branch of the Rothschild family. All six topette buckets originally included in the service have now been catalogued. One is in the Milwaukee Museum of Art (inv. no. M1959.180), two are in the Toledo Museum of Art (inv. no. 1951.393), and the fourth was sold at Christie's in London on April 5, 1982, lot 10. The three buckets in the Toledo and Milwaukee museums are painted by the same hand as our fresheners. One of the buckets in the Toledo museum bears the mark of the painter Antoine Joseph Chappuis. Our two topette buckets, together with two mortars of the same service, were included in the sale of Madame B's collections, from the collections of Baron Gustave and Baron Robert de Rothschild, Piasa, June 11, 1997.