ATTRIBUTED TO JEAN-BAPTISTE FEUILLET, CIRCA 1780

Jean Baptiste Feuillet maître in 1760.

Carved circa 1780, from a green flecked ‘granite de Vosges’ and mounted with striking lion-mask handles, these elegant vases attributed to Jean Baptiste Feuillet (d. 1806) are a superb example of the fashion for vases montés which reached its zenith in the mid-1780s. They formed part of the collection of the comtes de la Rochefoucauld and one vase was depicted in a still life by the celebrated female artist Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), exhibited in the Salon of 1802.

JEAN BAPTISTE FEUILLET

The sculptor Jean Baptiste Feuillet was apprentice to Jacques-François Martin (maître in 1732) from 1750 and was received as maître in 1760. Feuillet designed the overall shape of his vases as well as drawing and sculpting models for his own bronze mounts intended for his own production, collaborating with many of the leading architects and bronziers of the day, such as François-Joseph Bélanger (1744-1818) and Pierre Gouthière (1732–1813). As well as being a designer and sculptor, he ventured into various businesses. He was the partial owner of a marble quarry in Alsace, on land belonging to the duc d'Aumont's niece, the duchesse de Mazarin. He opened an office on the rue du Coq, where he retailed in precious gilt-bronze mounted vases in porphyry, verde antico, and pink granite, acquired in some of the significant auctions of the 18^th century. He was, for instance, active as a buyer during the sale of the great amateur Randon de Boisset on 27 February 1777, for instance.

By 1781 however, the termination of the contract Feuillet held for his factory in Alsace, combined with the untimely death of the Duchesse du Mazarin, forced him, along with his business partner Jérôme-Robert Millin du Perreux, to dissolve their company three years later. They were obliged to auction their remaining stock and this sale took place on 23^rd March 1784. After the closure of his warehouses and stores Feuillet left Paris for Versailles where he became a member of the household of the comte d’Artois and duc de Berry. Upon the outbreak of the Revolution he retired permanently to Provins.

The fashion for carved marble and hardstone vases reached its apogee during the reign of Louis XIV and the decoration of the Galerie des Glaces in the 1680s and was given new impetus later in the 18^th century when-due to scarcity and costs-local marble was also sought. The Menus Plaisirs, the body tasked since 1627 with the design and production of such precious vessels identified a solution at the end of the reign of Louis XV. By the last quarter of the 18^th century precious objects carved from indigenous French stone, such as the green granite seen here, became as prized as stone imported from quarries in Italy. Louis-Marie-Augustin, 5th duc d'Aumont (d.1782) was instrumental in this promotion, having established ateliers specialising in the use of hardstones within the hôtel des menus-plaisirs.

At least two variants of the design of the present model is known to have been produced by Feuillet.
· A pair of vases of serpentine noir were listed as lot 11 in Feuillet’s sale on 23^rd March 1784.
· A further example, also conceived in serpentin noir although with a more slender neck, is in the Bibliothèque du musée des Arts décoratifs (Album Maciet, Vases France XVIII siècle, Artistes. A-C., pl. 36), possibly the aforementioned vases, sold in 1784.

One of the present pair of vases was almost certainly used by Anne Vallayer-Coster, in her Still life with peaches, prunes and grapes, exhibited in the Salon of 1802, no. 283 (E. Kahng & M. Roland-Michel, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 212, fig. 95, pl. 43).

It is possible that the artist met Alexandre-François de La Rochefoucauld (1767-1841) and his wife, Adélaïde de Pyvart de Chastullé (1769-1814), future first lady-in-waiting to Empress Joséphine, and that the present pair of vases may have already formed part of their collection at this date, or could even have been acquired earlier by the comtes father, François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld (1747-1827).
Their château de Verteuil, in Charente, dates back to 1080 and remained the seat of the Rochefoucauld family for almost a millennium. The present château with its five conical towers dates to the 15th century, but was renovated in the first half of the 19^th century in the Romantic style.

In the 1850s comte Hippolyte de la Rochefoucauld rediscovered the seven ‘Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries’, first recorded in the chateau in an inventory of 1680, being used by a peasant to cover vegetables in his barn. After restoration they were reinstalled in the chateau in 1856 and were subsequently sold to J. D Rockefeller in 1923.