Plate from the Rohan service
Sèvres Manufactory
(France)
1771–72
Object PlaceFrance
Medium/TechniqueSoft-paste porcelain, overglaze enamels, gilding
Credit LineGift of John Fox
Accession number46.7
On View
Not on viewClassificationsCeramics
Collections
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, 46.8, 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.
