A royal presentation gift: Silver lavabo garniture for the Marquis and Marquise of Montmelas
Silver vessels with two-coloured gilding. Comprising a ewer and basin. The centre of the oval scalloped basin emblazoned with the crowned arms of alliance of the Marquis de Montmelas and his wife Marguerite Catherine Hainault, former mistress of King Louis XV. The raised lip with a moulded rim decorated with finely chased cast silver floral swags suspended from ribbons alternating with shells and pairs of dolphins on the shorter faces and doves in twined laurel wreaths on the longer faces. The large baluster form pitcher with a fluted base reiterates the shell and dolphin motifs and supplements them with swans and herons. With a figural handle formed as a demi-figure of Venus handing a floral crown to the figure of Cupid lying on the shell shaped lid. With a smaller iteration of the engraved arms of alliance beneath the rounded spout. H of pitcher 29.5, H of basin 9, W 36.3, D 23.5 cm. Total weight 2479 g.
The drawings framed under glass, mat inner dimensions ca. 35 x 25 cm and 23.5 x 36 cm each.
Paris, marks of Jean-Baptiste François Chéret, 1770.
This lot also includes four surviving design sketches, some signed and annotated by Cheret, documenting the different phases of this work's creation. One with two views of the basin; the others with varying design proposals for the jug.
Marguerite-Catherine Haynault (1736 - 1823) was one of the ladies-in-waiting of Princess Marie Adélaïde (1732-1800), a daughter of Louis XV, and soon became his mistress. The union produced two daughters: Agnès-Louise de Montreuil (* 1760) and Anne-Louise de La Réale (* 1762). As an appointed favourite of the king, Marguerite was entitled to marry in order to secure a certain status for the king's illegitimate children. On 4 August 1766, she married Marquis Blaise Arod de Montmelas (1744 - 1815), a colonel in the regiments of the French Guards and, since 1758, appointed page to the French queen.
According to family tradition, this precious lavabo garniture was a gift from Louis XV to his former mistress and her husband, which makes the object remarkable in more ways than one. In addition to its royal patron and illustrious recipients, it is fascinating not only due to the exceptional quality of its execution and the fortunate circumstance that the design sketches have also been preserved - but also the simple fact that it has survived to the present day, as the vast majority of goldsmith's works from the time of the Ancien Régime have fallen victim to the crucible.
Literature
Works by Jean-Baptiste-François Cherets can be found today in many important public and private collections. Cf. a pitcher with figural handles in Frégnac, Les Grand Orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X, Lausanne 1965, p. 219; a sauce boat formerly in the ownership of the Duke of Buckingham, illustrated in cat. Of the D. David-Weill collection, part II, Paris 1971, no. 14; a large lavabo garniture in the Bulgari collection illustrated in Hernmarck, The Art of the European Silversmith, London 1977, no. 693. Cf. also Mabille, Les collections du Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris; Musée Nissim de Camondo, Orfèvrerie Française des XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles, p. 48 ff, no. 62 ff., and numerous works by Cheret in Dennis, Three centuries of French domestic silver, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 90 ff.