Sèvres - Lot 162

Lot n° 162
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
Sèvres - Lot 162
Sèvres Hard porcelain cookie figure from the Great Men series depicting Abbé Rollin, after Félix Lecomte, seated, right hand outstretched. Titled Rollin on the square base. Engraved: Sèvres and A.B. 7 at 9 for Alexandre Brachard, August 7, 1809. Empire period, year 1809. H. 38.5 cm. Missing fingers on the right hand and gunshot marks. In 1776, the Comte d'Angiviller, Director General of Bâtiments, began work on a series of marble statues representing the Great Men of France. They were to adorn the Grande Galerie of the Palais du Louvre, destined to become the Muséum. In a letter dated March 14, 1776, D'Angiviller contacted Jean Baptiste Pierre, Premier Peintre and future director of the Académie, expressing his wish to commission four sculptors from the Académie royale to create monumental statues representing "some man famous in the nation for his virtues, talents or genius". D'Angiviller selected the Illustrious Men to be statues, and Pierre proposed the sculptors. Twenty-seven statues of Great Men were created in the 18th century. The personalities chosen were divided between philosophical writers, churchmen and statesmen, military heroes and men of war. They were never installed in the Galerie du Louvre, and remained in reserve in the Salle des Antiques until the end of the Ancien Régime, when most of them were sent to the Institut. In 1782, the Comte d'Angiviller decided to publish Great Men in the form of Sèvres cookies, based on terracotta reductions supplied by sculptors. He described his project in a letter dated January 16, 1782, addressed to the director of the Régnier factory: "I believe, Sir, that I have already told you of my intention to have the statues of the Great Men executed in porcelain and in small, which His Majesty has already had executed in marble by the principal sculptors of his Academy. I have reason to believe that these pieces will be very successful and will be eagerly purchased. I have therefore already instructed Mr. Pierre to ask the artists who executed these pieces for clay models to form the necessary hollows". The sculptors receive the substantial sum of 1,000 livres for their clay models. Twenty-three Great Men are published by the Manufacture de Sèvres: Racine, Chancelier d'Aguesseau, Corneille, Chancelier de l'Hôpital, Fénelon, Catinat, Sully, Vauban, Molière, Montesquieu, La Fontaine, Tourville, Condé, Molé, Duquesne, Bayard, Luxembourg, Rollin, Montaussier, Descartes, Pascal, Turenne. King Louis XVI bought the first cookie copies, which were displayed in his Versailles library. On April 26, 1806, the Emperor, through Pierre Daru, Intendant général de la Maison de l'Empereur, asked Brongniart, director of the manufactory, to "propose to His Majesty a list of the Great Men of the last century, whether military, philosophers or literati, whose models we have. She will choose those who could be remade in cookie to be placed in her apartments". (Arch. MNS, Carton T2 liasse 1, dossier 1). Of the twenty-three figures in the original series, sixteen were selected, and the Emperor expressed the wish to add twelve more: William the Conqueror, Duguesclin, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick II, Caesar, Annibal, Homer, Virgil, Le Tasse, Christopher Columbus, the first Medici, and Prince Eugene. As the sculptors were slow to supply their models, only Homer, Virgil and Le Tasse were made during the Empire. Like Louis XVI, Napoleon gave the Great Men series as diplomatic gifts, one of the first being a present to Grand Duke Charles II of Baden on the occasion of his marriage on April 6, 1806 to the Emperor's adopted niece, Stéphanie de Beauharnais. Bibliography: Francis H. Dowley: "D'Angiviller's Grands Hommes and the Significant Moment" The Art Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 4 (December 1957), pp. 259-277 Rosemarie Stratmann-Dölhler "Zur Hochseit von Stephanie de Beauharnais - Höfische Geschenke aus der kaiserlichen Porzellanmanufaktur Sèvres," Weltkunst, January 1995, pp. 16.19. Tamara Préaud: "Les Grands Hommes en Sculpture à Sèvres au XIXème siècle", The French Porcelain Society Journal, Vol. II, 2005, pp.120-132.
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