Sèvres compote bowl (part of a service)

Description:

The compote bowl comes from a service that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) gave to his sister Pauline (1780-1825) when she established a home in Paris at the hôtel de Charost. The pale lilac used as a ground color was fashionable in post-revolutionary France, a time when interior designers experimented with new and unusual colors and color combinations, and one of the boudoirs in the hôtel de Charost was painted in a similar color. The figure subjects are painted in brown and highlighted in gold on a ground painted to imitate marble. On one side the subject appears to be Mars the god of war with helmet, club, and vulture at his feet, his chariot drawn by three hybid monsters, but we see also the attributes of other gods like Mercury's staff, and neptunes trident. On the other side of the bowl the subject of a female figure in a chariot drawn by cupids holding flaming torches is also not clear. Two Roman heads in profile are painted on medallions with marble grounds, and framed by gold stars, purple beads and foliate ornament.

The compote's light lilac ground has dark purple ornament painted in overglaze enamel. A Greek key pattern circles the bowl below the rim, and a foliate frieze circles the base of the bowl where it meets the foot. The foot stem supporting the bowl is heavily gilded, and a band of gold circles the interior of the compote, which is otherwise left undecorated.

See Liana Paredes, 2009, exhibition catalog “Sèvres Then and Now: Tradition and Innovation in Porcelain, 1750-2000”, p.73, p.148.

This compote belongs to the Alfred Duane Pell collection in the National Museum of American History. Before Pell (1864-1924) became an Episcopalian clergyman quite late in life, he and his wife Cornelia Livingstone Crosby Pell (1861-1938) travelled widely, and as they travelled they collected European porcelains, silver, and furniture. Pell came from a wealthy family and he purchased the large William Pickhardt Mansion on 5th Avenue and East 74th Street in which to display his vast collection. The Smithsonian was one of several institutions to receive substantial bequests from the Reverend Pell which laid the foundation for their collections of European applied arts.