SCEAUX - Lot 239

SCEAUX Pair of soft porcelain figures representing an oriental couple seated on rocks and tree trunks, he is dressed in purple pants and a long fur-trimmed coat with polychrome decoration of flower seeds and wearing a turban, she is dressed in a dress with polychrome decoration of flowers and wears two flowers in relief in her hair. 18th century. Manufacture of Jacques Chapelle H. 28 cm. Restoration to the male figure. Bibliography: To be compared with a pair of oriental figures. Pescheteau-Badin sale March 28, 2023 sold for 11,500 euros Among these, decorated with similar flowers, are - the seated Chinese from the former Pflueger collection, now in the Boston Museum of Art, reproduced in Hugo Morley-Fletcher, Early European Porcelain and Faience as collected by Kiyi and Edward Pflueger, 1993, vol. 2, 1993, p. 74-75, - a grotesque female figure in the Hartford Museum (Clare Le Corbeiller and Linda Roth, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum, 2000, no. 43, pp. 72-73), - three Chinese figures from the Linsky Collection at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Clare Le Corbeiller¸The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art¸1984, n° 302-304, pp. 324-325), a female figure from the former Irwin Untermeyer Collection (Sotheby's, London, June 13 1995, lot 221). This oriental couple is one of the most extravagant statuettes in French porcelain. The style of the flowers, thrown in semis, isolated, in iron red, purple or yellow, the ochre-brown palette of the bases, present on the next two groups, the creamy ivory-white paste and the rough modelling form the characteristics of Sceaux's still little-known and often misattributed soft-paste porcelain statuary.