Chinoiserie; brocade silk; floral motif in navy, beige, pink, and red. Condition: Fair; several panels in poor condition because of tears and stains.

This large jar or urn is one of the most ambitious pieces produced by the Chantilly factory, which was founded in 1730 near the Château de Chantilly, the seat of Louis-Henri (1692–1740), duc de Bourbon, seventh prince de Condé. Louis-Henri purchased the land and buildings in 1730 expressly to establish a porcelain factory, and it is likely that the first products of the new enterprise appeared within a year or two after the factory’s founding.[1] Similar to Saint-Cloud, the production was entirely of soft-paste porcelain, because the formula for true or hard-paste porcelain was unknown in France at that time. The early paste developed at the Chantilly factory must have been deemed insufficiently white, since tin was routinely added to the glaze in order to provide a whiter surface on which the enamel decoration would be applied.[2] The presence of tin created a distinctive, opaque, cool white glaze that is a characteristic feature of Chantilly porcelain during the first twenty years of the factory’s history.[3]The Chantilly factory was awarded a letters patent in 1735, which suggests that its production was sufficiently accomplished by that date to merit recognition. The letters, which functioned as a royal privilege, were granted specifically to Cicaire Cirou (French, 1700–1755), the director of the fledgling factory. Relatively little is known of Cirou’s training, but it appears that he worked both at the Saint-Cloud factory and as a porcelain painter in Paris before arriving at Chantilly.[4] The letters patent granted Cirou the right to produce “fine porcelain in all kinds of colors, types, shapes, and sizes imitating the porcelain of Japan”[5] for a period of twenty years. The specification of the factory’s production to imitate Japanese porcelain can be viewed as an acknowledgment of the already established style of the factory’s porcelain, and it may also be regarded as a reflection of Louis-Henri’s interest in Asian porcelain. The duc de Bourbon had a large and notable collection of Asian works of art that he had both inherited and purchased.[6] The collection of Asian ceramics, of which approximately 1,700 are listed in an inventory taken at the time of Louis-Henri’s death in 1740, was particularly strong in Japanese porcelains.[7] The descriptions in the inventory are brief and their accuracy can be questioned, but Japanese porcelains in the Kakiemon style [8] appear to make up the majority of the Japanese holdings.The strong influence of Japanese Kakiemon-style porcelains on Chantilly’s early production reinforces the prevalence of this type of porcelain in Louis-Henri’s collection, and it also suggests that his Japanese pieces were made available to the workers in the factory. While some Japanese forms were copied at Chantilly, it was the motifs of Kakiemon wares that were most influential at the new factory. Decorative schemes taken from Kakiemon porcelains were both copied directly and interpreted by the factory’s painters; however, the primary influence of these Japanese porcelains was the embrace of asymmetry and spare decoration, which are two of the hallmarks of Japanese porcelain in the Kakiemon style.Another source of motifs for the painters at Chantilly was a book of prints published in 1735 by Jean-Antoine Fraisse (French, ca. 1680–1739), entitled Livre de desseins chinois, tirés d’après des originaux de Perse, des Indes, de la Chine et du Japon . . . (Book of Chinese designs taken after the originals from Persia, India, China, and Japan . . .).[9] Fraisse, who lists himself as painter to Louis-Henri on the title page, dedicated the Livre to his employer and cited Louis-Henri’s collection of works of art from Asia as his source of inspiration.[10] The Livre contains a series of prints[11] that provided compositions and decorative motifs for copying by artisans working in a variety of media, and several of Fraisse’s designs were employed by the painters at Chantilly.This jar, which originally would have had a cover, reflects these influences on Chantilly porcelain in the 1730s. Its form, including the fluted bands on the body and shoulder of the vase, is directly derived from a Japanese Kakiemon example,[12] and the painted decoration is inspired by the aesthetics of Kakiemon wares employing the same primary palette of blue, turquoise, red, and yellow, with the addition of brown and black for outlines and decorative details.[13] The scene depicting five figures seated at a table closely copies a composition in Fraisse’s Livre.[14] The composition of the seated male with three attendants found on the opposite side of the jar is not derived from Fraisse,[15] but the fact that the same scene appears on at least one other piece of Chantilly porcelain[16] suggests that a print of this composition must have been available to the painters at the factory.Both scenes depict figures either eating or drinking, but the significance of these two scenes and their pairing on this jar is unclear.[17] While Fraisse’s source for the composition of the seated figure with attendants is unknown, it is likely that it reflects his own invention, though perhaps ultimately rooted in an Asian work of art in Louis-Henri’s collection. All of the figures decorating the jar are clearly intended to represent Asians, and the palette of colors and the sprays of Asian-inspired flowers are inspired directly by Japanese Kakiemon porcelains. However, despite these decorative features and the use of a Japanese form, the Chantilly jar only distantly evokes its Japanese models. The shaped decorative band painted just beneath the shoulder is not typically Japanese in style and the large scale of the figural decoration is uncharacteristic of true Kakiemon porcelains. A further departure from the Japanese models is the awkward fit of the composition of figures around the table and the decorative band above them. Nevertheless, the Museum’s Chantilly jar can be regarded as a major achievement by a nascent factory aiming to produce soft- paste porcelain in the then- fashionable Japanese taste. Chantilly’s production in the Kakiemon style was less concerned with absolute fidelity to Japanese models than it was to reinterpreting and making accessible a certain Japanese aesthetic for a sophisticated European clientele.Footnotes(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Munger, European Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018)1 For a history of the Chantilly factory, see Dawson 1994, pp. 32–35; Le Duc 1996, pp. 35–55; Garnier-Pelle 2011, pp. 15–24.2 The factory began employing a clear lead glaze without the addition of tin by the early 1750s but did not completely abandon the use of tin glaze for several decades; Jeffrey H. Munger in Munger et al. 1992, pp. 223–24, no. 177. 3 Tin was also added to the glaze at the Villeroy factory; see entries 49–52 in this volume.4 Le Duc 1996, pp. 35–36.5 “porcelaine fine de toutes couleurs, espèces, façens et grandeurs à l’imitation de la porcelaine de Japon.” Dawson 1994, p. 32. 6 See Nelson and Impey 1994. 7 The inventory is partially transcribed in “Inventaire du duc de Bourbon” 2011. 8 For an explanation of the term “Kakiemon,” see Impey 1990; Impey 2002, pp. 25–29.9 The full title is Livre de desseins chinois, tirés d’après des originaux de Perse, des Indes, de la Chine et du Japon, dessinés et gravés en taille-douce par le sr Fraisse, peintre de S.A.S. Monseigner le Duc, dedié a Son Altesse Serenissime (Paris: Ph. Nic. Lottin, 1735).10 Garnier-Pelle 2011, p. 10.11 Various versions of the Livre survive, each slightly different in terms of the number of prints and the order in which they appear; see S. Miller 1996.12 See Finaz de Villaine and Garnier-Pelle 2011, p. 24, no. 28. This Japanese jar is now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, as is a Chantilly copy of it (Finaz de Villaine and Garnier-Pelle 2011, p. 25, no. 29), but it is not certain if both were in the collections of Louis-Henri in the eighteenth century. There are similar Japanese examples at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1985.49), and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Ala. (1980.431).13 Overglaze brown enamel was used infrequently on Japanese Kakiemon-style porcelain; see Impey 1990, p. 140.14 Garnier-Pelle 2011, ill. p. 20.15 This seated figure does not appear in either the copy of the Livre in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (40.38) or Fraisse 2011 (facsimile reprint of the 1735 edition), but it is possible that it is included in one of the other versions of the Livre, as no two versions are identical.16 A bottle cooler (seau à bouteille); Finaz de Villaine and Garnier-Pelle 2011, p. 27, no. 34. 17 The two scenes are also paired on a Chantilly jar with similar, though wider, fluted decoration (Le Duc 1996, ill. pp. 116–17), and the composition of the figures around a table is paired with a different scene, also taken from Fraisse’s Livre, on a Chantilly jar of the same model (Christie’s, London, sale cat., February 24, 1997, no. 190).

This porcelain figure depicts Shoulao, the Daoist god of longevity. Along with Fuxing (god of happiness and good fortune) and Luxing (god of wealth), Shoulao was frequently portrayed in paintings and on ceramic vessels beginning with the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) in China,[1] during which time three-dimensional ceramic depictions of him began to appear as well.[2] Shoulao’s most recognizable attribute is his elongated bald cranium, which symbolizes wisdom and long life. As in this example, representations of Shoulao commonly portray him as a smiling old man, his age indicated by his long beard. The pronounced earlobes in this example are not frequently found, though precedents exist.[3] Other traditional attributes of Shoulao, including a deer, a crane, and a peach[4]—all symbolizing long life or immortality—have not been included in this portrayal, which may reflect the lack of understanding of the true identity of this religious figure on the part of the Chantilly modeler. The Chantilly Shoulao holds a fan in his right hand, and in his left, a curving staff that extends behind him across his back. While the fan does not appear to have any symbolic meaning, the staff, with its irregular shape, may depict the branch of a peach tree, a reference to the Daoist fruit of longevity.[5]The prominent, elongated head of the Chantilly figure is accentuated by the unusual manner in which it has been decorated. Whereas the rest of the figure has been tin-glazed and decorated with enamel colors, the head and the arms have been painted with a brown pigment that has not been fired after application. A similar unfired black pigment has been used for the beard and eyebrows, and these unfired pigments have a matte surface that together distinguish them from the rest of the figure by drawing attention to the remarkable head and face. The use of a darker pigment or enamel for Shoulao’s head is not commonly found on Chinese representations of the deity, but examples decorated in this manner are known.[6]The Chantilly factory produced a sizable number of figures during the 1730s intended to represent Asian deities or figures, and often the line between the two is considerably blurred. The visual evidence offered by these figures indicates that fidelity to an Asian model was not the goal; rather, the intent seems to have been to evoke an exotic and romanticized Far East with its unfamiliar deities and inhabitants. Some of the Chantilly figures were clearly made as representations of Budai, the laughing monk, and Fuxing.[7] Figures of Budai in glazed but undecorated porcelain from Dehua, located in the central Fujian province, and commonly known by the nineteenth-century term blanc de chine, were widely exported from China to Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they served as both models and sources of inspiration for the modelers at Chantilly and other European factories.[8] However, most of the Asian-style figures produced at Chantilly were only loosely inspired by Chinese or Japanese models, if at all, and it is often unclear if a deity or generic “Asian” figure is being portrayed. This lack of clarity regarding the identity of these figures is reflected in the two terms that were used, seemingly interchangeably, to categorize this type of object. Both pagodes and magots were the catchall French terms in the eighteenth century to describe figural sculpture that evoked Asian characters.[9] The sale catalogue for the artist François Boucher’s (French, 1703–1770) collection included more than three pages of pagodes de pâtes des Indes,[10] referring to various models of these figures, many of which were partially or entirely made of brown stoneware. Of particular relevance to the Chantilly factory, the inventory of the collection of the factory’s patron, Louis-Henri (1692–1740), duc de Bourbon, seventh prince de Condé, listed more than forty pagodes in a variety of media.[11]It is probable that several of these figures served as inspiration for the modelers at Chantilly, and the large number of such figures in Louis-Henri’s collection may account for the unusually wide array of pagode models produced by the factory. Seated figures with either globes[12] or potpourri jars[13] were especially popular, and both seated[14] and standing figures[15] with nodding heads were also produced. The sheer variety of pagodes made at Chantilly and the other French soft-paste porcelain factories at Saint-Cloud and Villeroy[16] attest to the popularity of such figures in the middle decades of the eighteenth century in France, and even Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (vol. 9, 1765) mentions, with considerable disdain, the fascination with which these figures were held.[17] While Chinese porcelain figures of Shoulao from earlier centuries were produced for domestic altars or shrines, as gifts, or even for burial with the deceased,[18] the Chantilly figures of Shoulao, Budai, and other Chinese personages presumably were devoid of any symbolism or particular meaning at the time of their production. One may assume that they were intended to be playful evocations of an alluring but little-understood culture, and their decorative function is underlined by the fact that many may have been produced to be mounted in gilt bronze to form clocks or candelabra.[19] The open tublike container that sits behind Shoulao to the left may have served a function that was connected to a now-disappeared gilt-bronze mount. A similar opening appears on a figure of Shoulao most closely related to the Museum’s example. This figure, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris,[20] sits rather than stands, and his beard and eyebrows have not been picked out in black enamel. However, his head is also painted with unfired brown pigment, and his robe is decorated with very similar and distinctive spiraling motifs centered by a blossom and Japanese Kakiemon-style flowers. The placement of the open container to this figure’s right might suggest that the New York and Paris figures were made as a pair, intended to be mounted in gilt bronze and to serve as fashionable objets de luxe, enhanced with touches of playful exoticism.Footnotes(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Munger, European Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018)1 Matos 2011, vol. 1, p. 232.2 Ströber 2011, pp. 154–55, no. 57.3 Matos 2011, vol. 1, pp. 232–33, no. 93.4 See Ayers 2002, p. 94, no. 45.5 Alternatively, it may depict a ruyi scepter, a symbol of good fortune. 6 Harrison-Hall 2001, p. 442, no. 14:14.7 For examples, see Clare Le Corbeiller in Roth and Le Corbeiller 2000, pp. 40–41, no. 17; William Rieder in Metropolitan Museum 1984a, pp. 240–41, no. 148. 8 Le Corbeiller in Roth and Le Corbeiller 2000, p. 41. 9 Ibid., p. 41, n. 5; Kisluk-Grosheide 2002.10 Catalogue raisonné des tableaux . . . M. Boucher 1771, pp. 89–93. 11 Le Corbeiller in Roth and Le Corbeiller 2000, p. 41. 12 Le Corbeiller 2003.13 Le Corbeiller in Metropolitan Museum 1984a, p. 324, no. 301. 14 Jeffrey H. Munger in Munger et al. 1992, pp. 218–19, no. 171. 15 Morley-Fletcher 1993, vol. 2, pp. 56–57.16 Le Corbeiller in Metropolitan Museum 1984a, pp. 318–19, nos. 290, 291.17 Diderot 1969, vol. 2, p. 734, s.v., “magot.” 18 Matos 2011, vol. 1, p. 232.19 For example, see Le Duc 1996, ill. pp. 161, 164, 165. The latter two are in the Museum (1974.28.91; 1982.60.84). 20 Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (GR 299).

Étienne Le Noir was the patriarch of a dynasty of French clockmakers who specialized in movements for clocks with lavishly decorated cases for royal and aristocratic patrons. This clock is unique in having its case made of porcelain rather than more typical gilded bronze, and there are only two other surviving examples of wall clocks with Chantilly porcelain cases. The figures imitate Japanese porcelain, as was quite usual at the Chantilly porcelain factory.

1735~ / 1740~, France

1735~ / 1740~, France

Description