Lidded Vase [1 of 2]

The left vase (27.39) and another example of the same shape with different decoration were illustrated by Garnier circa 1890 and described as vases à culot. Neither the title nor the form has been traced in the factory records. Brunet and Préaud speculate that this shape may correspond to a vase reliquaire listed in a factory inventory of 1774. This pair is dated for 1774, so the suggestion seems plausible, especially as no other shape is known to correspond with that title, and the form has an ecclesiastical character, resembling the shape of a censer.
The vases are decorated with an overglaze dark blue (beau bleu) ground color and painted in colored oval reserves on the front with figural scenes. On one, a boy in a landscape plays a triangle; on the other, a girl holds a box containing a marmot. The back of each vase has a white reserve of the same size and shape as that on the front, painted in polychrome with a red ribbon suspending a trophy of musical instruments and toys dominated by a large drum on the back of the vase with the boy, and a trophy of musical instruments dominated by a hurdy-gurdy on the back of the vase with the girl. The reserves are edged with a gilded band of the same pattern. A pattern of gilded oak garlands frames the top and sides of each reserve, with a spray of laurel along the base of the reserves and garlands of laurel framing the gadrooned shells at the base of each vase.
The figural scenes represent peasant children from the Savoy Alps who visited French fairs with their entertainments. Such Savoyard themes were very fashionable, to such an extent that some aristocrats had their children portrayed as Savoyard peasants. This theme was introduced at Sèvres circa 1757. The source for the scenes on this pair of vases has not been identified. They are similar in character to two sets of engravings published c. 1761 titled Premier [and Deuxième] Livre de Figures, d'après les porcelaines de la Manufacture Royale de France, inventées en 1757 par M. Boucher. Each engraving depicts a single male or female peasant child gesturing toward a child of the opposite sex in an accompanying image. The original figures modeled by Etienne Falconet (1716-1791) after designs by François Boucher (1703-1770) remained popular through the 1760s and into the 1770s.
More elaborate Savoyard scenes are painted on a vase à bâtons rompus of c. 1765-1770 and include a marmot in a box in the trophy on the back, and on a covered jug and basin of 1767 that includes an image of a peasant boy playing a hurdy-gurdy. The latter bears the mark of the painter Charles-Eloi Asselin (1743-1804), one of the factory's principal figure painters. On a déjeuner losange of 1766 he painted scenes of rustic children that are freely adapted from various engraved sources such as the Boucher children of 1757 cited above. Asselin's influence is evident in the figural scenes on the Huntington vases, which are painted in a similar style. The pastoral trophies on the backs of the vases may have been influence by the work of Louis-Gabriel Chulot (1736-1824), who painted similar trophies incorporating musical instruments that sometimes include toys.
The pedestals are decorated with an unusual pattern of flat gilded bands, similar to that on a vase à lauriers at The Huntington (cat. 93). The three vases have the same ground color and similar patterns of gilded garlands of oak and laurel, leading to speculation that the three were once part of the same garniture. This would seem unlikely at first as the subjects of the reserves on these vases and the vase à lauriers are quite different, the pair representing peasant children at play and the vase à lauriers showing children of a higher class playing with martial attributes. The three vases are, however, united by a common theme-children at play-indicating that they may originally have been intended to form a garniture.