Wine cooler from the Prince de Rohan service

Sèvres Manufactory (France)

Etienne Evans (French, born 1733, active 1752–1806)

about 1771

Object PlaceFrance

Medium/TechniqueSoft-paste porcelain, overglaze enamels, gilding

Dimensions17.4 cm (6 7/8 in.)

Credit LineGift of John Fox

Accession number46.8

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsCeramics

Collections

Europe

Provenance1772, Louis-René-Edouard, Prince de Rohan (b. 1734 - d. 1803), Vienna (original commission) [see note 1]. 1870, Anatole Nicolaievitch Demidoff, Prince of San Donato (b. 1813 - d. 1870), Florence; March 23, 1870, Demidoff sale, Paris, lot 120, to William Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley (b. 1817 - d. 1885), Park Lane, London [see note 2]. Leopold de Rothschild (b. 1845- d. 1917), Ascott House, England [see note 3]; probably by descent to his son, Anthony de Rothschild (b. 1887 - d. 1961), Ascott House, England [see note 4]. By 1943, French and Company, New York; 1946, sold by French and Company to John Fox, Boston; gift of John Fox to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 10, 1946)

NOTES:
[1] These dishes were part of a 368-piece dessert service ordered by Louis-René-Edouard in 1771, the year of his appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Viennese Court. The service was delivered by Sèvres on September 7, 1772. See "Les Grands Services de Sèvres" exh. cat., Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, May 25 - July 29, 1951, p. 32, no. 7. See MFA object nos. 46.6 - 46.7, 65.1854 - 65.1855, and 65.1894 - 65.1895, which came from the same service.
[2] Edwin J. Hipkiss, "Three Pieces of Sèvres Porcelain," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, 44, no. 258 (December, 1946), p. 88, discusses the provenance of the part of the service, comprising 172 pieces, that had been in the Demidoff collection.

[3] Hipkiss (above, n. 2) notes that the pieces had been in the Rothschild collection; notes in the MFA curatorial file further indicate the pieces had belonged to Leopold de Rothschild. Other pieces from the same service have also been identified as coming from the Leopold de Rothschild collection; for example, see Anne Odom and Liana Paredes Arend, "A Taste For Splendor: Russian Imperial and European Treasures from the Hillwood Museum" (Alexandria, VA, 1998), p. 161, cat. 68, for a plate that was sold by French and Company in 1946.

[4] When French and Company first offered pieces from this service to the MFA in 1943, the service was said to have been with its last owner "for over seventy years." Anthony de Rothschild inherited Ascott House and its contents in 1937. Other pieces from the same service passed by descent from Leopold to Anthony de Rothschild; see, for example, Carl Christian Dauterman, "The Wrightsman Collection. Porcelain" (New York, 1970), p. 269.