Sceaux Rarities in Faience and Porcelain – a Near Match

Both of these unmarked plates were made during the Jacques and Jullien period (1763-1772) at the Sceaux manufactory and decorated by Fidelle Duvivier during his first employment there,
c. 1766-68. By this time these two managing partners were openly making porcelain since the royal monopoly on porcelain production held by Vincennes was no longer being enforced.(i)

1b A set of four Sceaux faience plates, à bord déchiqueté, c. 1766-68, with notched edges highlighted in blue, and each decorated with a scene in camaïeu rose within a cartouche outlined with greenery and blue ribbons. The set was auctioned by Pierre Bergé & Associés, Paris (Drouot-Richelieu auction, 21 Dec. 2009, lot 197). All four were decorated by F. Duvivier.

 

The similarity of the decoration on both pieces points to the likelihood that the porcelain example also dates to this first period of Duvivier’s employment at Sceaux. In addition to his very fine bird subjects he was also encouraged to paint maritime scenes of this kind – landscapes with figures standing near rivers, estuaries or harbors.(ii) Some are reminiscent of the Dutch landscape scenes that he painted in puce while later working for Loosdrecht and The Hague (c. 1780-84).

You might be wondering whether there are traces of the manufactory today in Sceaux? I am not aware of any archaeological excavations that have unearthed sherds or other objects identified with the faience and porcelain manufactory or with Duvivier. But there is at least one surviving building connected to its past.

4 The “Petit Château,” built
c. 1661, is one of the oldest buildings still standing on the Sceaux grounds today. It is three doors down from the church Saint Jean-Baptiste (next to the word ‘Paroiße’ on the map at left), where Duvivier’s daughter was baptized in 1775 during his second stay in Sceaux (see Footsteps, pp. 83-87).

The present-day street named the rue des Imbergères (“r” on the map above) is located directly behind the Petit Château. Below this street on the map is the letter “v” appearing under a long structure which still exists as a residential building with apartments (5). It is all that remains of the original quadrilateral built in 1740 at the direction of the manufactory’s first patroness,

the Duchess of Maine. It was described in 1868 by the historian Dr. Julien Thore in his publication, Les anciennes fabriques de faïence et de porcelaine de l’arrondissement de Sceaux, with these words: “this spacious (main) building of hewn stone had rooms for composition on the ground floor, two of them serving as a storage space for finished goods. On the first floor was the chambre de chimie (a room for chemical procedures and mixing), then came the workshop for the modelers and painters. The second floor contained residential apartments.” The building formed one side of a square enclosed courtyard with sheds for wood, grinding mills, areas for preparing clay, turning and modeling, various kilns for making colors and firing wares. By all appearances the production was very centralized in one area.(iii)

So today visitors are at least able to admire the exterior of a historic building where Duvivier and his colleagues carried out their task of decorating Sceaux faience and porcelain.

 

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Notes

(i) See C. Jacob-Hanson, In the Footsteps of Fidelle Duvivier, pp. 17, 41 (note 27).

(ii) See other Sceaux examples in Footsteps, pp. 26-28.

(iii) Quoted in the exhibition catalogue by George Poisson, Maddy Ariès, Christian Gautier, Christian Béalu, and Jacques Bastian, Sceaux–Bourg-la-Reine. 150 ans de céramique de collections privées aux collections publiques (Christian Gautier, Syndicat d’Initiative, 1986), pp. 22-24 (my translation). Sketched plans of the original manufactory grounds are shown and explained in two issues of the Bulletin des Amis de Sceaux – nouvelle série, n° 3, 1986, p. 17, and n°4, 1987, p. 20 (these articles can be viewed online –
http://amis-de-sceaux.org/wp-content/plugins/page-flip-image-gallery/popup.php?book_id=18
http://amis-de-sceaux.org/wp-content/plugins/page-flip-image-gallery/popup.php?book_id=19 )