Vase
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 - Amsterdam 1695)
Category
Ceramics
Date
1765
Materials
Porcelain
Measurements
36 x 26 x 15 cm
Place of origin
Chelsea
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446369.11
Summary
Jar. From jar and cover from a seven-piece garniture of pot-pourri jars, soft-paste porcelain, inverted pear-shaped on four scroll feet with two pierced scroll-handles, pierced neck and cover, the reserved panels on a crimson or claret-coloured ground with tooled gilding painted in polychrome enamels with an agitated Venus, goddess of love, identified the harnessed swans that draw her chariot, mourning the death the beautiful Adonis, god of beauty, killed while out boar hunting with his two hounds, and a weeping cupid, the reverse with a peacock and other birds in the manner of the Dutch artist Melchior de Hondecoeter (1636-95), maker's mark a gold anchor mark; Chelsea, London, England, circa 1763-4. The subject derives from ‘Ovid's Metamorphoses’, and depicts Cupid's punishment for playfully scratching his mother with his love-inflicting arrow, however, the goddess of love has already fallen for a mortal, Adonis, who will die shortly after their first and only encounter. The image is faithfully based on ‘La Mort d’Adonis’ by François Boucher (1703-70) engraved by Louis Surugue (1686-1762), published in Paris in 1742. The composite depictions of farmyard fowl and pheasants in formal landscapes, including peacocks and turkeys in the 17th-century manner of Melchior de Hondecoeter (1636-95) or Francis Barlow (1626-1704), ‘Multae et diversae avium species’, London, 1650-55, were possibly also based on engravings by Joseph Sympson (1710-50) after paintings by Marmaduke Craddock (c.1660-1716), published in 1741-3. (Ferguson, 2014) Provenance: 'Said to have been for George III as a present to Lady Cope on her marriage in 1767 and subsequently in the possesion of Lord Dudley, hence their title “The Dudley Vases”'.
Marks and inscriptions
gold anchor mark
Makers and roles
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 - Amsterdam 1695), painter
