Circular dish with eight indentations around the rim. With a shallow depression in the center and pink ground. The central reserve features of scene of two puttis roasting hearts over a fire.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. The Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection.
Both dishes appear to be made of eighteenth-century Sèvres porcelain but decorated later, probably during the nineteenth century. Round dishes of this model were in production by the early 1750s and would be included as part of dessert services. Each has a different incised mark and 27.76 is slightly larger and more heavily potted than is 27.75. Such slight variations of size and molding are not atypical of eighteenth-century production, but would not be expected to be found in later forgeries. These two examples may have remained undecorated and sold from the manufactory as white seconds, rebuts blanc, that would have been decorated elsewhere. The dishes are painted underneath in blue enamel with a mark in the manner of that used by the eighteenth-century royal manufactory: crossed Ls enclosing a letter i suggesting the date 1761, and a mark above copying that used by André-Vincent Vielliard, a bar with three dots above. Like the marks, the decoration on these dishes is inspired by that produced at Sèvres; however, the unusual combination and arrangement of these elements indicate that the decoration was done elsewhere. Both gilded patterns (the palm fronds and floral vines around the reserve and the elaborate border of scrolls enclosing a variety of diaper patterns decorating the inner rim) were used at Sèvres, but not together on the same piece. The scrolled pattern around the rim was used on white but not on colored grounds. The painted decoration in the reserves includes large areas of white that create an unbalanced composition, and the painting of the figures is not typical of that done by Vielliard, whose style was sketchier and less precise. He is also quite unknown as a painter of cherubs. A square dish with later decoration of similar character to that on the Huntington dishes is at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Although it has a yellow ground, it has a large circular reserve edged with a similar gilt pattern and the figure painting in the reserves seems comparable to that on the Huntington pieces. The square dish is also marked in imitation of Vielliard. These characteristics suggest that these pieces could have been decorated in the same workshop.
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