Vase and Cover (Vase cassolette Bachelier)

The scene on this vase was painted by one of the most talented decorators at the Sèvres factory, Charles-Nicolas Dodin (1734–1803). To create this decoration Dodin adapted a composition titled “Le Sommeil interrompu” (“The Interrupted Sleep”) first created by the leading painter François Boucher. Boucher created the scene of a shepherd teasing a sleeping shepherdess for Madame de Pompadour, royal mistress to King Louis XV, and it first hung at the château de Bellevue (it is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Dodin worked from an engraving of the painting created by Nicolas-Dauphin de Beauvais (1687?–1763). The vase and cover was called a "Vase cassolette Bachelier" by Sèvres after the designer of this shape, Jean-Jacques Bachelier (1724–1806).

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Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Collection of Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906), by 1906; inherited by William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts (1851–1921); Burdett-Coutts Sale, London, 9-11 May 1922, no. 257 [1]. Collection of Edwin Marriott Hodgkins (1860–1932), Paris, by 1927 [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; with A. Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York, by 1928 [mode of acquisition unknown]; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1928; by bequest to the Walters Art Museum, 1931.

[1]. Christie, Manson & Woods, “Catalogue of the Collection of Porcelain Objects of Art and Decorative Furniture of the Late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Lady of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Now sold by Order of the Executors of the Rt. Hon. W. Burdett-Coutts, M.P., Deceased, Late of 1 Stratton Street, W., and Holly Lodge, Highgate,” sale cat., London, 9-11 May 1922, p. 33 and illustrated in plate opposite: “258 A BOAT-SHAPED VASE, finely painted with a Boucher subject of a shepherd and shepherdess in a landscape, on white ground modelled and gilt with rosettes and trelliswork, and with gilt laurel festoons in high relief on the shoulders and ends, by Dodin, 1768, mounted with ormolu cover and scroll foot—11 1/2 in. high, 12 in. wide.”