Flower Vase with Compartments, known as Choisy
Sèvres Manufactory, painted by André-Vincent Vieillard (1717-1790) · 1760
A low, wide flower holder in soft-paste porcelain, its pink ground crossed by a trellis of dark blue lines with a dot of gold at every intersection. On the front, an oval reserve framed in gold opens onto an open-air tavern scene, peasants drinking and dancing, adapted from a painting by David Teniers, the Flemish Merrymaking now in the Hermitage. Around the base run rows of dark blue dots called partridge eyes and a double line of gold. Look at the painter's tiny signature among the marks on the underside: the interlaced Ls of the royal factory, the date letter for seventeen sixty, and the sign of André-Vincent Vieillard, one of the factory's most versatile figure painters.
The shape is called a cuvette with compartments or Choisy, after the royal château of Choisy, and it was meant to hold cut flowers in water on a mantelpiece or table. Pink grounds of this kind were among the most expensive Sèvres produced and were especially associated with Madame de Pompadour, the factory's great patron. The vase was sold at auction in Paris in December nineteen seventy-seven and bought by the Louvre that year.
Did You Know? The little dots around the base have a name in Sèvres jargon: partridge eyes.
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