Although a few Vincennes porcelain figures exist that are glazed, the royal factory adopted at an early date the practice of producing unglazed biscuit figures that, because of the purity of their material, resemble marble figurines. The fashion for biscuit figures first introduced at Vincennes quickly spread through Europe.

Vincennes Porcelain Factory

The French National Manufacture of soft-paste porcelain was established at Vincennes in 1738 before it moved in 1756.

François Boucher

French Rococo artist who epitomizes the frivolous and elegant court life of France in the mid-18th century. During his early career he was closely associated with Watteau, many of whose paintings he engraved. Boucher was a successful and incredibly prolific artistic who had a major impact on both fine and decorative art of the 18th century. He is particularly noted for having reinvented the genre of the pastoral, creating images of shepherds and shepherdesses as sentimental lovers that was taken up in a variety of medium. Boucher's sketchy manner of painting helped to promote painterliness as an end in itself. This trend dominated French painting until the emergence of Neoclassicism, when the tides of criticism turned against Boucher and his followers.

Provenance

R. Henry Norweb, Cleveland, Ohio.

Citations

Chavagnac, Xavier Roger Marie, and Gaston Antoine Grollier. Histoire des manufactures françaises de porcelaine. Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1906. p. 268

Bourgeois, Émile. Le biscuit de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle. Vol. 2. Paris: Goupil, 1909. p. 4, pl. 3

Guérinet, Armand, ed. Les Biscuits de la manufacture nationale de Sevres, XVIIIe siecle & XIXe siecle. Paris: A. Guerinet, 1910. pl. 43, 35

Bourgeois, Émile, and Georges Lechevallier-Chevignard. Le biscuit de Sèvres: recueil des modèles de la manufacture de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: P. Lafitte, 1913. no. 367, pl. 1

Les oeuvres de la Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. Vol. 1, La Sculpture de 1738 à 1815. Sèvres: Manufacture nationale, 1932. p. 8, no. 382

Hawley, Henry. "Ceramics of the Rococo Age." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 48 (March 1961). p. 54-55, fig. 6

Zick, Gisela. "D'Après Boucher. Die Vallée de Montmorency und die europäische Porzellanplastik." Keramos 29 (July 1965). p. 5, fig. 1a, b

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 135 archive.org

Dauterman, Carl Christian. The Wrightsman Collection. Vol 4, Porcelain. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966. p. 283, no. 115

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 135 archive.org

Jedding, Hermann. Europäisches Porzellan. Vol. 3. München: Keysersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1971. p. 279, no. 869

Préaud, Tamara. Porcelaines de Vincennes: les origines de Sèvres. Paris: Éditions des Musées nationaux, 1977. p. 159, 171

Guillemé-Brulon, Dorothée. "Le Premier surtout de table en Biscuit de Sèvres." L'Estampille 173 (September 1984). p. 42-45

Boucher, François. Francois Boucher, 1703-1770. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. p. 353-54, no. 96

Fay-Hallé, Antoinette. "De l'influence de l'art de Boucher sur l'oeuvre de la Manufacture de Vincennes-Sèvres." Actes du IIIe Colloque national de céramologie: Paris, 9 décembre 1989. Paris: Editions Varia, 1989. p. 18, fig. 1; p. 20

Préaud, Tamara, and Antoine d' Albis. La porcelaine de Vincennes. Paris: A. Biro, 1991. p. 172-73, no. 175

Versailles et les tables royales en Europe: XVIIème-XIXème siècles. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1993. p. 285-86

Exhibition history

Year in Review (1961). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 1-26, 1961).