Vase cover
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 - Amsterdam 1695)
Category
Ceramics
Date
1765
Materials
Porcelain
Measurements
9 x 11 cm
Place of origin
Chelsea
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446369.6
Summary
Cover to a jar, 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 foliate tooled gilding painted in polychrome enamels with the union of Flora, goddess of flowers, with Zephyr, god of Spring, surrounded by putti creating a garland of spring flowers, the reverse with guinea fowl, pheasants 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, deriving from 'Ovid's Fasti, Book 5', celebrates the arrival of Spring and the union of Flora and Zephyr. The image is faithfully based a French engraving entitled ‘Zéphire et Flore’ by Jean-Baptiste Tilliard (1740-1813) after Charles Michel-Ange Challe (1718-78). The publication of the engraving, along with its pair, ‘Jupiter et Lèda’, also by Challe and engraved by Tilliard, was announced in the ‘Mercure de France’ on October 1761. The same subject appears on a possibly slightly later jar of the same form at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marion, published by F. Severne Mackenna,'Chelsea Porcelain: the Gold Anchor period', 1752, p. 70. The application of the crimson ground is more liberal and dense, whereas the decorator of the Upton jar has deftly incorporated more of the white ground to lighten its appearance. 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 possession of Lord Dudley, hence their title “The Dudley Vases”'.
Makers and roles
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 - Amsterdam 1695), painter
