Flower Vase

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The cuvette à tombeau was produced at Sèvres in three sizes, this example being of the third and smallest size. The name refers to the sarcophaguslike shape of the rectangular vase. It was probably designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis and was intended to hold cut flowers or porcelain flowers mounted on naturalistically painted metal stems. Dated examples of the first size are known from 1753, although the shape does not appear in the sales records until 1756. The second and third sizes were introduced in 1759, with dated examples of the third size known from 1760-1768. The smaller sizes seem to have been made primarily as parts of garnitures rather than to be sold as single examples.
This vase is decorated with an overglaze green ground color and painted in a colored reserve on the front with a pastoral scene adapted from designs by François Boucher. Each side of the vase has a white reserve painted with polychrome fruit and flowers. The back of the vase is undecorated except for the ground color. All three reserves are edged with gilt bands with that on the front having additional scrolls. The front of the vase is framed with an unusual gilded stamped running motif, and the corners are decorated along each edge with gilded sprays of flowers and foliage.
The decorative scheme on this vase is closest to a garniture of three vases hollandois now at the Wallace Collection, London. Like the Huntington vase, each of the three Wallace vases has a green ground with a pastoral scene after Boucher painted in the front reserve, fruit and flowers painted on white in the side reserves, and an undecorated back. Most telling, however, is that the Wallace vases have the same gilded pattern around the reserves and the same unusual stamped running motif framing the front and side panels and front pilasters that is used to frame the reserves and front panel of the Huntington vase. That these vases share so many decorative elements is unusual and suggests that they were decorated by the same team of artists and may have been designed to form a larger suite of similarly decorated pieces. The Wallace vases are dated 1762 and are marked for the decorator Charles-Louis Méreaud (c. 1735-1780, active 1756-1780; see cat. 78), who painted the side reserves with fruit and flowers. It is possible that Méreaud also painted the side reserves on the Huntington vase. The painter of the figural reserves on the Wallace vases is not known. It is possible that they are by André-Vincent Vielliard (1717-1790, active 1752-1790) or Gabriel Rousseau (active 1761-1766), and that the same artist painted the scene on the front of the Huntington vase.

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