Sevres corbeille jatte 1810

Description

A large Sèvres porcelain basket or corbeille forme jatte, its broad circular bowl supported on a spreading foot and framed by an elaborate openwork border. The restrained white ground is contrasted by exceptionally rich gilding, characteristic of the most prestigious productions of the Imperial manufactory during the reign of Napoleon I.
This corbeille à jatte’, is one of four made for the Sèvres service ordered by Emperor Napoleon I in October 1807, known as the ‘Service particulier de l’Empereur’. The service was delivered to the Tuileries Palace on 27 March 1810, just in time for the wedding ceremony and marriage banquet of the Emperor and Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, which took place six days later on 2nd April. From the evidence it would appear none of the corbeille were used during the banquet.

History & Context

This superb ‘corbeille forme jatte’ basket is one of four that were made for the Sèvres service commissioned by Emperor Napoleon I in October 1807, known as the Service particulier de l’Empereur.¹ It was delivered to the Tuileries Palace on 27 March 1810, just in time for the wedding ceremony and banquet of the Emperor and Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, which took place six days later, on 2 April, and at which the service was used. Its delivery to the palace is recorded in the archives of the Sèvres manufactory,² where it is described as the “Service particulier de Sa Majesté” [His Majesty’s Private Service].

Napoleon had long contemplated a second marriage in order to secure his political position and had begun divorce proceedings with his first wife, Joséphine, in 1809. His first choice had been Anna Pavlovna, the youngest sister of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. However, negotiations took longer than expected, and Austria, anxious to assert its position between Russia and France, two allied superpowers, wished to put forward Marie-Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis II of Austria. The couple were married by proxy in Vienna on 11 March and by the French state on 1 April. The religious wedding ceremony took place the following day, 2 April, in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, temporarily converted into a chapel. Napoleon and Marie-Louise then proceeded to the Tuileries through the Grande Galerie, where an official banquet, the grand couvert, took place.

The artists at Sèvres began work on the service in January 1808, and it was completed a little over two years later. It comprised four principal components: a dinner service (including twenty-four soup plates, eight butter dishes, eighteen pots-à-jus and four salad bowls); a dessert service (with twenty-four assiettes à monter, twelve compotiers, two ice-pails, four sugar bowls, seventy-two plates and ten baskets); a cabaret service (with twenty-four cups and saucers, three sugar bowls, a cream pot and a milk pot); and a biscuit-porcelain table centrepiece consisting of twenty-five pieces, including sixteen figures modelled in the antique manner. The cost of the whole amounted to the considerable sum of 69,549 francs.³

Of the ten baskets manufactured for the dessert service, four were “corbeilles forme jatte”, at 125 francs each, four were “corbeilles anses panier”, at 110 francs each, and two were of very large size with serpent handles, recorded as “grandes corbeilles à anses serpent”, at a price of 650 francs each.⁴ The decoration of the service is described in the manufactory registers as “fond vert de chrome, frise militaire ombrée en brun” [chrome-green ground, military frieze shaded in brown].

The ten baskets entered the sales store on 31 March 1810, with the present corbeille jatte being described simply as “richement dorée” [richly gilded].⁵

Seventy-two plates were included in the service, and Napoleon himself provided detailed instructions for twenty-eight of the scenes. The service is extraordinary for its representation of specific examples from the political and cultural life of the Empire, including topographical scenes and events connected with French imperial expansion, particularly Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy, Austria, Prussia, Poland and Egypt in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These were supplemented by views of Paris, the Imperial residences and the great institutions of the French Empire.

Production of the service was supervised by the director of the manufactory, Alexandre Brongniart, assisted by Dominique Vivant Denon. The artists responsible for the painted scenes were among the most accomplished at the manufactory and included Jacques-François Swebach, Nicolas-Antoine Le Bel, Jean-François Robert, Christophe-Ferdinand Caron, Jean-Claude Rumeau, Jean-Louis Demarne and François Gonord.

The green-ground borders were decorated in gilding with a frieze of antique-style daggers intertwined with a French-style garland of foliage, designed in April 1807 by the father of the manufactory’s director, the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. The gilded decoration was entrusted to François-Antoine Boullemier, his brother Antoine-Gabriel, and Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Vandé.

The “corbeilles jatte”, do not appear in the celebrated painting of the wedding banquet by Alexandre Benoît Jean Dufay, called Casanova (1770–1844), in which most of the table appears to be occupied by the Grand Vermeil service of the goldsmith Henry Auguste and elements of the biscuit-porcelain table centrepiece. It is nevertheless probable that the baskets were used during the feast, if not as part of the principal setting, then as part of the serving porcelain which constituted the Service particulier de l’Empereur.

Pieces from the service are today widely dispersed, with examples preserved in the Musée Napoléon at the Château de Fontainebleau, the Musée de Malmaison, the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces in Brussels and the Musée de la Cité de la Céramique at Sèvres. One plate is in the Louvre (inv. no. OA10354), another in the Musée Napoléonien of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, and a small number of plates remain in private collections.

A plate from the service painted with a scene depicting the celebration at Mont Saint-Bernard on the occasion of General Desaix’s funeral was sold on 9 November 2021 at Osenat, Fontainebleau, for €350,000. Another, painted with Frederick the Great and his greyhounds in the gardens of Sans-Souci Palace at Potsdam, was sold in the same rooms on 5 May 2021, lot 220, for €243,750. Another, painted with the frigate La Muiron arriving at Ajaccio with General Bonaparte in October 1799, was sold there on 2 July 2017, lot 210, for €306,250. Another, painted with the Emperor’s camp on the island of Lobau in 1809, was sold there on 16 November 2014, lot 129, for €410,000.

A plate with gilded decoration at the centre was sold by Metayer Mermoz, Antibes, on 4 February 2021 for €61,750. Another plate was sold by Étude Thierry de Maigret, Paris, on 8 April 2016, lot 183, and another at Osenat on 19 November 2017, lot 184. A pair of biscuit candlesticks made after models from the table centrepiece was sold at Sotheby’s, London, on 4 July 2012 for £133,000.

On 15 October 1815, Napoleon landed on Saint Helena with those faithful followers who voluntarily accompanied him into exile, including General Henri-Gratien Bertrand, Grand Marshal of the Palace, and his wife, together with Count Charles de Montholon, aide-de-camp, and his wife. Among the possessions Napoleon took to his residence on the island, Longwood House, were sixty plates from the Service particulier and the cabaret service.⁷

The Service particulier de l’Empereur, of which this basket formed an important element, was undoubtedly highly prized by Napoleon. He gave precise instructions for its decoration, used it for the great occasion of his marriage to Marie-Louise, took it with him into exile, and specified that it should be bequeathed to his son, Napoleon II, after his death.

Pieces from the service virtually never appear for sale and, among the plates listed in the original service, only a small number have not subsequently been traced to museums or private collections. This therefore represents a particularly rare and integral component of this Imperial service.

Notes

1. Also known as the “Service des Quartiers Généraux.”
2. Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique archives, Vy19, fols. 17–18.
3. For further references to the service in the Sèvres archives, see C. Leprince, Napoléon Ier & La Manufacture de Sèvres: L’Art de la Porcelaine au service de l’Empire, Paris, 2016, p. 282.
4. Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique archives, Vu1, fol. 91.
5. Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique archives, Vu1, fols. 91–92.
6. Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique archives, Vy18, fol. 98.
7. The present basket was not part of this group.

Marks & Inscriptions

Painted
R M 12 8 = Charles-Raphaël Morin — gilder, 1805–1812

Stamped
M. Imple
de Sevres
1810

Bibliography

Napoléon Ier et la Manufacture de Sèvres L’art de la porcelaine au service de l’Empire, Camille Leprince,
2016.

Additional photographs