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PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN ESTATE
THE ORLOFF SERVICE: A HIGHLY IMPORTANT PAIR OF LOUIS XV SILVER WINE COOLERS
MARK OF JACQUES-NICOLAS ROETTIERS, PARIS, 1770
Details
THE ORLOFF SERVICE: A HIGHLY IMPORTANT PAIR OF LOUIS XV SILVER WINE COOLERS
Mark of Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers, Paris, 1770
Each vase form, on spreading circular foot with waterleaves, the neck with broad flutes above a row of pearling, the shoulder applied with garlands of ivy above gadrooning, the handles of stylized scrolling snakes with acanthus and pendant husk, the rim with band of laurel; marked with charge and export discharge of Julien Alaterre; also with Russian hallmarks for St. Petersburg 1784, standard mark 91, and assaymaster Nikifor Moschalkin; one with engraved and stamped inventory number 6 marked with French marks in interior and inside footrim, one with inventory number 11 marked with French marks under base and inside footrim; both with export discharge on outer footrim and later French control marks on rim and foot
10½in. (26.6cm.) high; 304oz. (9468gr.) (2)
Mark of Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers, Paris, 1770
Each vase form, on spreading circular foot with waterleaves, the neck with broad flutes above a row of pearling, the shoulder applied with garlands of ivy above gadrooning, the handles of stylized scrolling snakes with acanthus and pendant husk, the rim with band of laurel; marked with charge and export discharge of Julien Alaterre; also with Russian hallmarks for St. Petersburg 1784, standard mark 91, and assaymaster Nikifor Moschalkin; one with engraved and stamped inventory number 6 marked with French marks in interior and inside footrim, one with inventory number 11 marked with French marks under base and inside footrim; both with export discharge on outer footrim and later French control marks on rim and foot
10½in. (26.6cm.) high; 304oz. (9468gr.) (2)
Provenance
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia
Count Gregory Orloff, after 1772
Reacquired by Catherine the Great in 1784, then by descent in the Imperial Collection to Tsar Nicholas II, until 1917
The Soviet Government, until probably 1926
Jacques Helft, purchased through a Soviet agent in Berlin, probably in 1926
A European family, purchased from Helft in May 1934, then by descent to the present owner
Count Gregory Orloff, after 1772
Reacquired by Catherine the Great in 1784, then by descent in the Imperial Collection to Tsar Nicholas II, until 1917
The Soviet Government, until probably 1926
Jacques Helft, purchased through a Soviet agent in Berlin, probably in 1926
A European family, purchased from Helft in May 1934, then by descent to the present owner
Further details
[SUPP PORTRAIT - EX 8756/170]
Catherine the Great (1729-1796), attributed to Virgilus Erksen, circa 1770
[SUPP PORTRAIT - BARCODE 20848217]
Count Gregory Orloff (1734-1783), attributed to Andrei Chernov, circa 1770
[SUPP PHOTO - BARCODE 20348149]
Part of the Orloff Service illustrated in Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conserveée dans les gardes-meubles des Palais Impériaux, 1907, vol. I., plate 32.
[SUPP PHOTO - BARCODE 20848194] NOT YET LAID OUT
Catherine the Great, portrait by Andrei Chernov, 1765
These wine coolers belong to the celebrated Orloff Service, one of the greatest commissions of French silver of the 18th century. Catherine the Great ordered the service from the Parisian silversmiths Jacques Roettiers and son Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers for use at Court, although she subsequently presented it to her lover and political ally Count Gregory Orloff. Roettiers, father and son, both Orfèvres du Roi, enlisted four other workshops to produce an astonishing 3,000 pieces in only 18 months; however, only around 1,000 pieces survived by 1907, when Baron A. de Foelkersam published his well-known inventory of the Russian Imperial silver collections.
At that time, sixteen wine coolers were recorded; the present examples are coolers number 6 and number 11. Foelkersam recorded the weight of no. 6 as "11 funts 84 zolotniks" (equivalent to 156 oz.) and no. 11 as "11 funts 30 zolotniks" (equivalent to 149 oz.)--matching their present weights of 156 oz. and 148oz. 6dwt., respectively, and confirming that these were in the Imperial Collection in 1907.
CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE ORLOFF SERVICE
Like Peter the Great before her, Catherine II, Empress of All the Russias, sought to create an enlightened government adorned by Western civilities. To this end, she imported not only Western intellectuals, but also Western art--which she bought in vast quantities. In single purchases she acquired almost 200 pictures from Houghton Hall, sold by the descendants of Robert Walpole through Christie's in 1779, the collection of 225 pictures from Johann Gotskowski of Berlin in 1764, the vast "Swan" service of Meissen porcelain from Heinrich von Bruhl of Saxony in 1769, and countless works of French art made to order, including pictures, furniture, Sèvres porcelain, Gobelins tapestries, and magnificent Parisian silver. In an effort to elevate manners at official entertainments (Peter the Great's guests had to eat several courses off the same plate), Catherine ordered numerous dinner services in porcelain, pottery, and silver--but the greatest of these was the French silver service by Roettiers.
When Peter III, Catherine's unpopular husband, succeeded as Emperor in 1762, it only took a few months for Catherine's partisans to remove him from the throne, and he died "of apoplexy" shortly thereafter. Instrumental in Catherine's immediate succession as Empress were the four Orloff brothers, among whom was Gregory, her lover of twelve years. After the overthrow, Catherine raised Orloff to the rank of Count, improved his standing in the military, and gave him many gifts--but she would not marry him or relinquish her absolute power.
The order of the Orloff service is extensively documented by correspondence surviving in the Court Ministerial Archives and published by Foelkersam in 1907 (vol. II, pp. 87-124). The letters show that, beginning in March 1770, Catherine enlisted her most important art advisor, French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (in St. Petersburg 1766-1778) to procure for her a silver dinner service from Paris "for the court of her Imperial Majesty." Catherine was introduced to Falconet by her Ambassador in Paris, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, in 1766. Golitsyn, established in French intellectual circles, procured important pictures for the Empress and also introduced her to Diderot, a close friend of Falconet who also influenced her collecting activities. Falconet was persuaded to move to St. Petersburg in 1766 by Catherine's commission to create a monumental bronze equestrian sculpture of Peter the Great, finally completed in 1782.
On 13 February 1770 Catherine wrote to Falconet, "I hear you have some designs for a silver service . . . I should like to see them if you will show them to me, for I have a mind to order one for sixty people." The result of this fantaisie as she put it, was one of the largest orders of French silver ever executed, numbering over 3,000 pieces when it was completed in 1773. While one of Catherine's letters of April 1770 expresses reservations about the projected cost of the service, Falconet's reply in May pronounced the designs to represent "bon goût dans l'orfèvrerie," and the commission was approved. Falconet ordered the service through the St. Petersburg retailer Barral, Chanony & Cie., and payment was recorded on 14 January 1771, with the transfer of funds to their agent at the French Court, Nikolai Khotinskii, "for delivery to the silversmiths Roettiers on account of the famous table service."
Unable to share the throne with Catharine, Orloff became highly dissatisfied with his position. A fascinating letter in Catherine's own hand, presumably addressed to Ivan Grigorevitch Orloff, the eldest of the brothers, and written in 1772, outlines terms of reconciliation with the Orloff brothers. Her letter underscored these terms by including a list of gifts, with one of the most valuable being item 11: "the silver service, French produced, which is kept in the cabinet. I would like to give to Count G. G., together with that which was bought for everyday use from the Danish Minister." (A.P. Barsukov, Stories from Russian History, St. Petersburg, 1885, as quoted in Foelkersam.) Orloff received the first shipment on 17 September 1772, and continued to accept a series of deliveries until 1776, the year that she and Orloff finally separated. Orloff then retreated to Holland, only returning to Russia in 1782, but he died shortly thereafter in 1783.
Catherine instantly ordered the return of the dinner service, but Orloff's heirs managed to take possession of it, and she was compelled to buy it back from the family. The documents indicate that, in preparation for this purchase, it was Catherine herself who ordered that the silver be assayed and marked with Russian hallmarks, which can still be found on all the pieces in the service alongside the original French marks (see illustration opposite). She also directed the removal of Orloff's coat-of-arms, described in a letter from the Chief Court Chancellor Aleksandr Bezborodko to another brother Gregorii Nikitich Orloff: "Regarding the purchase by the wish of her Imperial Majesty on 22nd of June last of the large silver service belonging to the late General Field Marshall Prince Grigorii Grigor'evich Orloff, Her Majesty desires to make the service for general use and wishes to remove the coat-of-arms therefrom. I abide by this desire. Your Excellency's humble servant Aleksandr Bezborodko." Finally, on July 17 1784, the Court Office ordered Aide-de-Camp Colonel Buxhoevden to ensure "that the above-mentioned service . . . should be listed and weighed with their cases for delivery to Her Majesty's silver-stewards Konstantin Kulichkin and Ivan Rodionov."
The Orloff Service remained in the Imperial Collection under the Emperors Paul, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III and finally Nicholas II. The Soviet government sold some pieces privately through a representative in Berlin, according to dealer Jacques Helft, who acquired a number of pieces including presumably the present coolers in 1926. There were also pieces sold at auction in Berlin around 1930. Today, only 46 pieces from the Orloff service survive in the Hermitage and 123 in the Armory Museum at the Kremlin, with 230 pieces known in collections outside Russia. The only other wine coolers from the service now in a public collection are a set of four at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris.
(Sources: Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conservée dans les gardes-meubles des Palais Impériaux, 1907; Clare Le Corbeiller, "Grace and Favor," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, February 1969, pp. 289-298; Jacques Helft, Treasure Hunt: Memoirs of an Antique Dealer, London, 1957, pp. 28-29; Geraldine Norman, The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum, London, 1999; one of the four at the Musée Nissim de Camondo is illustrated in Les Grands Orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X, Paris, 1965, p. 206)
CAPTION FOR HALLMARKS: French marks: silversmith Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers, Paris charge mark for 1768-1774, Paris warden's mark for 1770; Russian marks added in 1784: St. Petersburg town mark, standard mark 91, and assay master's mark NM in Cyrillic
Catherine the Great (1729-1796), attributed to Virgilus Erksen, circa 1770
[SUPP PORTRAIT - BARCODE 20848217]
Count Gregory Orloff (1734-1783), attributed to Andrei Chernov, circa 1770
[SUPP PHOTO - BARCODE 20348149]
Part of the Orloff Service illustrated in Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conserveée dans les gardes-meubles des Palais Impériaux, 1907, vol. I., plate 32.
[SUPP PHOTO - BARCODE 20848194] NOT YET LAID OUT
Catherine the Great, portrait by Andrei Chernov, 1765
These wine coolers belong to the celebrated Orloff Service, one of the greatest commissions of French silver of the 18th century. Catherine the Great ordered the service from the Parisian silversmiths Jacques Roettiers and son Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers for use at Court, although she subsequently presented it to her lover and political ally Count Gregory Orloff. Roettiers, father and son, both Orfèvres du Roi, enlisted four other workshops to produce an astonishing 3,000 pieces in only 18 months; however, only around 1,000 pieces survived by 1907, when Baron A. de Foelkersam published his well-known inventory of the Russian Imperial silver collections.
At that time, sixteen wine coolers were recorded; the present examples are coolers number 6 and number 11. Foelkersam recorded the weight of no. 6 as "11 funts 84 zolotniks" (equivalent to 156 oz.) and no. 11 as "11 funts 30 zolotniks" (equivalent to 149 oz.)--matching their present weights of 156 oz. and 148oz. 6dwt., respectively, and confirming that these were in the Imperial Collection in 1907.
CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE ORLOFF SERVICE
Like Peter the Great before her, Catherine II, Empress of All the Russias, sought to create an enlightened government adorned by Western civilities. To this end, she imported not only Western intellectuals, but also Western art--which she bought in vast quantities. In single purchases she acquired almost 200 pictures from Houghton Hall, sold by the descendants of Robert Walpole through Christie's in 1779, the collection of 225 pictures from Johann Gotskowski of Berlin in 1764, the vast "Swan" service of Meissen porcelain from Heinrich von Bruhl of Saxony in 1769, and countless works of French art made to order, including pictures, furniture, Sèvres porcelain, Gobelins tapestries, and magnificent Parisian silver. In an effort to elevate manners at official entertainments (Peter the Great's guests had to eat several courses off the same plate), Catherine ordered numerous dinner services in porcelain, pottery, and silver--but the greatest of these was the French silver service by Roettiers.
When Peter III, Catherine's unpopular husband, succeeded as Emperor in 1762, it only took a few months for Catherine's partisans to remove him from the throne, and he died "of apoplexy" shortly thereafter. Instrumental in Catherine's immediate succession as Empress were the four Orloff brothers, among whom was Gregory, her lover of twelve years. After the overthrow, Catherine raised Orloff to the rank of Count, improved his standing in the military, and gave him many gifts--but she would not marry him or relinquish her absolute power.
The order of the Orloff service is extensively documented by correspondence surviving in the Court Ministerial Archives and published by Foelkersam in 1907 (vol. II, pp. 87-124). The letters show that, beginning in March 1770, Catherine enlisted her most important art advisor, French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (in St. Petersburg 1766-1778) to procure for her a silver dinner service from Paris "for the court of her Imperial Majesty." Catherine was introduced to Falconet by her Ambassador in Paris, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, in 1766. Golitsyn, established in French intellectual circles, procured important pictures for the Empress and also introduced her to Diderot, a close friend of Falconet who also influenced her collecting activities. Falconet was persuaded to move to St. Petersburg in 1766 by Catherine's commission to create a monumental bronze equestrian sculpture of Peter the Great, finally completed in 1782.
On 13 February 1770 Catherine wrote to Falconet, "I hear you have some designs for a silver service . . . I should like to see them if you will show them to me, for I have a mind to order one for sixty people." The result of this fantaisie as she put it, was one of the largest orders of French silver ever executed, numbering over 3,000 pieces when it was completed in 1773. While one of Catherine's letters of April 1770 expresses reservations about the projected cost of the service, Falconet's reply in May pronounced the designs to represent "bon goût dans l'orfèvrerie," and the commission was approved. Falconet ordered the service through the St. Petersburg retailer Barral, Chanony & Cie., and payment was recorded on 14 January 1771, with the transfer of funds to their agent at the French Court, Nikolai Khotinskii, "for delivery to the silversmiths Roettiers on account of the famous table service."
Unable to share the throne with Catharine, Orloff became highly dissatisfied with his position. A fascinating letter in Catherine's own hand, presumably addressed to Ivan Grigorevitch Orloff, the eldest of the brothers, and written in 1772, outlines terms of reconciliation with the Orloff brothers. Her letter underscored these terms by including a list of gifts, with one of the most valuable being item 11: "the silver service, French produced, which is kept in the cabinet. I would like to give to Count G. G., together with that which was bought for everyday use from the Danish Minister." (A.P. Barsukov, Stories from Russian History, St. Petersburg, 1885, as quoted in Foelkersam.) Orloff received the first shipment on 17 September 1772, and continued to accept a series of deliveries until 1776, the year that she and Orloff finally separated. Orloff then retreated to Holland, only returning to Russia in 1782, but he died shortly thereafter in 1783.
Catherine instantly ordered the return of the dinner service, but Orloff's heirs managed to take possession of it, and she was compelled to buy it back from the family. The documents indicate that, in preparation for this purchase, it was Catherine herself who ordered that the silver be assayed and marked with Russian hallmarks, which can still be found on all the pieces in the service alongside the original French marks (see illustration opposite). She also directed the removal of Orloff's coat-of-arms, described in a letter from the Chief Court Chancellor Aleksandr Bezborodko to another brother Gregorii Nikitich Orloff: "Regarding the purchase by the wish of her Imperial Majesty on 22nd of June last of the large silver service belonging to the late General Field Marshall Prince Grigorii Grigor'evich Orloff, Her Majesty desires to make the service for general use and wishes to remove the coat-of-arms therefrom. I abide by this desire. Your Excellency's humble servant Aleksandr Bezborodko." Finally, on July 17 1784, the Court Office ordered Aide-de-Camp Colonel Buxhoevden to ensure "that the above-mentioned service . . . should be listed and weighed with their cases for delivery to Her Majesty's silver-stewards Konstantin Kulichkin and Ivan Rodionov."
The Orloff Service remained in the Imperial Collection under the Emperors Paul, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III and finally Nicholas II. The Soviet government sold some pieces privately through a representative in Berlin, according to dealer Jacques Helft, who acquired a number of pieces including presumably the present coolers in 1926. There were also pieces sold at auction in Berlin around 1930. Today, only 46 pieces from the Orloff service survive in the Hermitage and 123 in the Armory Museum at the Kremlin, with 230 pieces known in collections outside Russia. The only other wine coolers from the service now in a public collection are a set of four at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris.
(Sources: Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conservée dans les gardes-meubles des Palais Impériaux, 1907; Clare Le Corbeiller, "Grace and Favor," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, February 1969, pp. 289-298; Jacques Helft, Treasure Hunt: Memoirs of an Antique Dealer, London, 1957, pp. 28-29; Geraldine Norman, The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum, London, 1999; one of the four at the Musée Nissim de Camondo is illustrated in Les Grands Orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X, Paris, 1965, p. 206)
CAPTION FOR HALLMARKS: French marks: silversmith Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers, Paris charge mark for 1768-1774, Paris warden's mark for 1770; Russian marks added in 1784: St. Petersburg town mark, standard mark 91, and assay master's mark NM in Cyrillic