Lot n° 154
Estimation :
1500 - 2000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 3 400EUR
CREIL et MONTEREAU.
Part of the Rousseau service in fine earthenware with polychrome decoration of birds, flowers, insects, butterflies and blue combed on the edges including a covered round tureen, a round dish, a cup on pedestal, seven dinner plates, six soup plates, ten dessert plates, an oval sugar bowl on adjoining tray (missing the cover and cracked), two oval dishes (one damaged)
Marked: Creil Montereau B et Cie model Rousseau Paris.
End of the 19th century.
The French engraver and ceramist Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914) is a key figure in the artistic life of the second half of the 19th century. He was a close friend of Manet, Degas, Gauguin and Rodin, but also of Gautier and the Goncourt brothers. Above all an engraver, he was at the origin of the revival of the etching technique. He guided many artists in this way, from Corot to Milliet, without forgetting Degas and Pissarro, within the impressionist group of which he was an active member. His reputation also rests on his discovery and appreciation of Japanese prints, which were to contribute to the aesthetic renewal of modern art.
In 1856, Bracquemond discovered a collection of engravings by the Japanese artist
Hokusai, typical of the pictorial genre known in Japan as "Kachô-ga", paintings of flowers and birds with the figuration of insects, crustaceans and fish. He was seduced by this theme which made him the initiator of the vogue for Japonism in France at the end of the 19th century.
Between 1860 and 1864, a collaboration with Theodore Deck allowed him to work on ceramics within the framework of decorative arts.
The history of the Rousseau service begins on March 16, 1866, with the first letter that the patron, François-Eugène Rousseau, sent to Bracquemond. Rousseau (1827-1890) was a "merchant-publisher" in the 1860s who employed free laborers. He had a project for an earthenware service and his ideas for decorations and asked Bracquemond for technical advice for its realization. Bracquemond takes the matter in hand and it is the plates engraved by
Bracquemond himself which are brought to the manufacture of Montereau where the service must be carried out. The Japanese subjects are borrowed from different albums of Hokusai, Hiroshige, or Katsushika
Isai and arranged randomly, following a ternary composition, a large subject accompanied by two small ones.
This service will be presented for the first time at the World Fair of 1867 where it was very successful. The jury awarded a bronze medal to Eugène Rousseau and a gold medal to the manufacture Lebeuf and Milliet.
The service is then completed (tea cups, coffee cups, teapot, sugar pot) and the manufacture will be left to the manufacture of Creil and Montereau.
Barluet, Lebeuf's successor, reissued it at the beginning of the 1880's.
On the occasion of the presentation of the Rousseau service at the International Exhibition in London, Mallarmé published in 1871 a lively eulogy, which was renewed in 1872: "I had refused to make any allusion, necessarily too brief, to this admirable and unique service, decorated by Bracquemond with Japanese motifs borrowed from the farmyard and the fishing tank, the most beautiful recent crockery that I have ever seen. Each piece, even the plates, wants its special description", "I should particularly mention, as a translation of the high Japanese charm made by a very French spirit, the table service asked, boldly, to the master aquafortist Bracquemond where the ordinary guests of the barnyard and the fishponds are strutting, enhanced with joyful colors".
Bibliography :
General catalog of the Universal Exhibition of 1867 in Paris, Paris, 1867.
J.P. Bouillon, C. Shimizu, P. Thiebaut , Art, industry and Japonism : the Rousseau service, exhibition catalog 1988.
L. d'Albis : " les débuts du japonisme céramique en France de Bracquemont à Chapelet ", Sèvres, n° 7, 1998, pp. 21-31, J.P. Bouillon, C. Meslin-Perrier, Félix Bracquemond et les arts décoratifs, du japonisme à l'art nouveau, exhibition catalog, 2005.
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