A Sèvres porcelain dish on stand with harbour scenes
"Écuelle ronde, nouvelle forme" with original lid, gilt pomegranate finial and "plateau à anses". Finely decorated with six lively harbour scenes in gilded surrounds, the borders with richly gilt scrolls and flowers. Conjoined double-L mark, painter's marks in blue enamel, iron red and mauve, incised mark 3 8 A (platter) and M (tureen). With a crack through one of the handles of the tureen. H of tureen with lid 12.7, D 14.2, W of plate 24.4 cm.
Circa 1775, decor by Jean-Louis Morin, Jean-Pierre Boulanger and presumably also Nicolas Catrice.
"The porcelain painter Jean-Louis Morin (1732 - 1787), who was engaged in Sèvres, specialised in harbour scenes as well as military and naval depictions. Several models bearing his signature show briskly painted, multi-figure port depictions with barrels, freight crates, ships at the harbour, seamen and cargo men in lavish gilt etched reserves. Noticeable on almost all pieces are the painted signs and numbers on isolated crates and barrels - so also to be found on our écuelle - which, however, have not yet been clarified or explained by research (Wallace Collection, inv. no. C447).
As prototypes, engravings and etchings after Ludolf Backhuysen, Johann Lingelbach, Claude Joseph Vernet or Lacroix de Marseille are to be assumed."
Provenance
"Former collection of J. F. Dickson.
Private collection, Rome."
Literature
"Cf. this painter's mark in Brunet/Préaud, Sèvres. Des origines à nos jours, Fribourg 1978, p. 357, 359 and 375.
An identically decorated tureen in the Wallace Collection London, illustrated in Savill, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, London 1988, vol. II, no. C436-7, and a cup with identical decor, no. C447.
Cf. also Roth/ Le Corbeiller, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The J. Pierpont Morgan Collection, 2000, no. 160, an écuelle with the same motifs by Jean-Louis Morin.
A tureen of this form in the Louvre Paris (inv. no. OA 12160 1)."