Sebastian Kuhn
Department Director
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Lot 6*
An important documentary Du Paquier two-handled ecuelle, cover and stand, circa 1735-40
3 December 2020, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £112,750 inc. premium
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Nette Megens
Head of Department, Director
Sophie von der Goltz
Head of Sale
An important documentary Du Paquier two-handled ecuelle, cover and stand, circa 1735-40
Painted by Jakob Helchis in Schwarzlot, the cover with a continuous landscape scene depicting four putti playing by classical vases and architectural fragments, signed 'Jacobus Helchis fecit', surmounted by a gilt finial, the ecuelle with a continuous scene depicting figures in a rocky wooded landscape with fortified buildings in the distance and applied with gilt figural handles, the stand with a large circular scene depicting a putto seated by trees looking through a telescope in the foreground, with two seated figures and a village in the distance, the shaped, gilt-edged rim with a scroll- and strapwork border enclosing trellis panels and heightened in gilding, the reverse of the stand with four flower sprigs, the ecuelle mounted on a high gilt-metal foot, the stand: 23.5cm across; the ecuelle: 21cm across handles, red-painted MAK inventory number Ke 7518.28970 (stand with haircrack to rim issuing from a flat chip on the reverse edge) (3)
Footnotes
Provenance:
C.W. Reynolds Collection, Eaton Square, London (sold at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 29 May-1 June 1871, or 25-27 February 1874);
James Sanders Collection (sold at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 4 May 1875, lot 130);
Mrs Beresford Melville Collection;
Heinrich Rothberger Collection, Vienna (by 1907);
Confiscated by the Vienna municipal authorities in November 1938;
Acquired by the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum (later Museum für angewandte Kunst), Vienna, in May 1939 (inv. no. Ke7518);
Restituted to Heinrich Rothberger's niece, Mrs Bertha Gutmann, in 2003;
Thence by descent
Literature:
W. Chaffers, Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain (1876), p. 428;
A. Wollaston Franks, Catalogue of a Collection of Continental Porcelain (1896), p. 38;
J. Folnesics/E.W. Braun, Geschichte der K.K. Wiener Porzellan-Manufaktur (1907), pl. VI, no.1;
E.W. Braun, Doccia Porcelain of the Earliest Period, in Burlington Magazine XIII (1908), p. 145;
M. Sauerlandt, Zwei Du Paquier-Porzellane von Jacobus Helchis, in Der Kunstwanderer 7/8 (1925-26), pp. 316-317
W. Mrazek, Wiener Porzellan aus der Manufaktur Du Paquiers (1952), pls. 44 and 45;
J. Hayward, Viennese Porcelain of the Du Paquier Period (1952), pl. 58a;
I. Schlosser, A Contribution to the Preissler-Anreiter-Helchis Problem, in Apollo (February 1952), p. 42, figs. VIII-X;
R. Charles, Continental Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century (1964). p. 73;
W. Mrazek/W. Neuwirth, Wiener Porzellan 1718-1864 (n.d. - 1970), pl. 25, no. 154a, b;
W. Neuwirth, Wiener Porzellan 1718-1864, exhibition catalogue (1982), pp. 56-57;
W. Koschatzky, Zur Kulturgeschichte des Porzellans, in Parnass 1 (1993), p. 52 (illustrated);
M. Chilton/C. Lehner-Jobst (eds.), Fired by Passion (2009), cat. no. 330;
C. Gschiel/U. Nimeth/L. Weidinger (eds.), Schneidern und Sammeln. Die Wiener Famile Rothberger, Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung, vol. 2 (2010), pp. 105-106 (illustrated)
Exhibited:
East Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Köpenick, Wiener Porzellan 1718-1864, May-October 1982
Along with the signed companion piece in the British Museum, this lot is of documentary importance in the history of the Du Paquier manufactory: these ecuelles provide the basis for the attribution of Jakob Helchis's work at Du Paquier and the Schwarzlot style imitating engravings, in particular.
Jakob or Jacobus Helchis was born in Trieste and worked in Turin and Venice before coming to Vienna. At his marriage on 15 August 1741, he was described in the register as "Jakob Felchis, porcelain painter, widower, born in Triest, resident in the porcelain manufactory" (C. Lehner-Jobst, History of the First Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, in Chilton/Lehner-Jobst, vol. 1, p. 212). He was subsequently in Munich, where - between 1747 and 1750 - he was involved in the early attempts to produce porcelain at the nascent Neudeck (later Nymphenburg) manufactory (F.H. Hofmann, Geschichte der Porzellanmanufaktur Nymphenburg, II (1922), p. 337).
The closely similar silver-mounted ecuelle and cover, also signed on the cover by Jacob Helchis but lacking a stand, is in the British Museum (Sir A.W. Franks Collection, inv. no. 163; published by Chilton/Lehner-Jobst, no. 329). Both the Franks example and the present lot were in the collections of C.W. Reynolds (mostly sold at Christie's in 1871, the remainder in 1874) and, subsequently, James Sanders.
