Property from the Fred and Kay Krehbiel Collection, Part I

Provenance:

Carlton Hobbs, London, 8 July 1996 (with invoice)

Note:

The present flowerpots are in the shape of the large square tubs designed specifically to hold orange trees. They were produced at both Vincennes and at Sèvres in a variety of sizes of which the present pair are an example of the second largest.

A pair of orange tubs, similar in size and decoration to the present two, both with blue interlaced Ls and the painter’s mark of a comma for Charles-Louis Méreaud, one also with date letter G for 1760, is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Barbara Lowe Fallas, 1964 (64.159.2a, b, .3a, b).

The flower painting on the present caisses carrées is by Jacques Fontaine (active 1752-1807), recorded at Vincennes and Sèvres as a painter specializing in flowers, figures, patterns and the highly specialized techniques of cameo decoration popular in the late 1770s and 1780s. He is also recorded as a gilder. His younger sister Mlle. Marie-Louise Fontaine also used a similar mark, but as she is recorded as a painter specializing in flowers and patterns from 1777-1794, the mark on the present orange tubs cannot be hers.

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