Garden vases
Claude Ballin II (Paris 1661 - Paris 1754)
Category
Architecture / Features & Decoration
Date
1770 - 1800
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
675 mm (Height)
Place of origin
France
Order this imageCollection
Lanhydrock, Cornwall
NT 880856
Summary
A pair of 18th Century bronze garden urns with gadrooned vines applied with grotesque male masks and swags of fruiting vines suspended from ribbon ties, on fluted columns above a frieze of acanthus; on octagonal bases and fitted with liners. On stone plinth.
Provenance
Acquired during transfer of the house to the National Trust. The urns in the formal gardens, once formed part of Lord Hertford's collection at the Chateau de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, west of Paris. They were modelled in the late 17th Century by Louis Ballin, goldsmith to Louis XIV. Bagatelle was built for Marie Antoinette in the 1770's by her brother in law, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards King Charles X, and it is possible that the urns were placed there then. Lord Hertford, who occupied Bagatelle in the mid-19th Century, bequeathed the urns to Sir Richard Wallace. Wallace, in his turn, left them to his secretary, Sir John Murray Scott, who removed them to Nether Swell, Gloucestershire. They were bought from his sister by the 7th Viscount Clifden who brought them to Lanhydrock.
Makers and roles
Claude Ballin II (Paris 1661 - Paris 1754)