A magnificent Sèvres royal gold-mounted blue-ground oval snuff-box made for Madame Adélaïde, circa 1785

Footnotes

Provenance:
Commissioned by Madame Adélaïde (1732-1800) and delivered in January 1786;
Baron James de Rothschild (1792-1868), by repute;
Baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911);
Baron Robert de Rothschild (1880-1946);
Baron Elie de Rothschild, Paris (1917-2007);
Thence by descent to the present owner

The remarkable provenance of this box stretches back five generations of the Rothschild family. The box is listed in the inventory of Gustave de Rothschild (RAL 000/3020/1, Catalogue déscriptif et historique des Objets d'Art composant les Collections de Monsieur le Baron Gustave de Rothschild, par Albert Jacquemart, 1873, applied paper collector's label inscribed 'R.62'), who received the major part of his father James de Rothschild's collection of boxes. A inventory compiled for Gustave's son Robert in the first half of the 20th century also lists the box (RAL 000/3020/2/1, Collection of Robert de Rothschild, vol. 1, n.d., applied paper collector's label numbered '626'), thence by descent to Robert's son Elie and on to the present owner.

Literature:
Brunet, Marcelle, "La Manufacture Royale de Sèvres," in L'Oeil, (March 1960): 60-71;
Savill, Rosalind, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, vol. II, 1988, pp. 848, 849 and 856, n. 3d;
Réjalot, Marie-Sophie, "Les collections de porcelaine de Sèvres de Mesdames de France," HAL, 2020, pp. 61-2

Exhibited:
London, 25 Park Lane, Three French Reigns, Loan Exhibition in aid of the Royal Northern Hospital, 21 February to 5 April 1933, cat. no. 251

Recorded in the Sèvres sales records, dated 19 January 1786:"Livré à Madame Adélaïde 1 tabatiere bleu montée en or et peint chiens et chat" for 960 livres. Paris date letters were introduced around the middle of 1786: this suggests that Madame Adélaïde purchased the box unmounted in January and that it was subsequently mounted by the king's jeweller according to her wishes. This is one of only four known Sèvres snuffboxes depicting the royal pets; the two belonged to Madame de Pompadour of which one is only known via a textual source and the other at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire (fig. 1; inv. 676), and the other belonging to Madame Victoire is in a private collection but was also published in Brunet, op. cit., p. 64.

Please note that this object has been requested for loan to the forthcoming exhibition 'Sèvres, Une Passion Rothschild', running from 15 April-29 July 2026 at the Mobilier National in Paris.

Madame Adélaïde: daughter of a King and rival to a Queen

Born at Versailles on 23 March 1732, Marie Adélaïde was the fourth daughter of Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczyńska. Endowed with a strong character from birth, Adélaïde—or "Madame," as all royal daughters were titled—would go on to command a sizeable influence at court over her father, Louis XV, and his successor (her nephew), Louis XVI as a leading member of the conservative and pro-Catholic Dévots faction at Versailles. This influence was felt most strongly with regard to the various mistresses and wives that both monarchs took. An early success in persuading their father not to take another mistress after the death of Madame de Pompadour in 1764 was short-lived with the arrival at Versailles of Louis XV's last mistress, Madame du Barry, in 1769. Neither ever having married, Adélaïde shared apartments with her younger sister Victoire in the central wing of the palace where the king resided. The arrival at Versailles in 1770 of the young and impressionable Marie-Antoinette, Dauphine of France, presented Adélaïde with an opportunity to recruit a potential ally against Madame du Barry. Indeed, Mesdames did not hesitate to enlist the future queen in their vicious campaign to ostracize their father's mistress; Marie-Antoinette's refusal to speak to Madame du Barry during the last years of Louis XV's reign was a result of Adélaïde's efforts to cultivate and shape the young Dauphine. After Louis XV's death, the relationship with the new Queen soured, and in time Adélaïde's salons both at Bellevue and Versailles became a rival centre of power where members of the anti-Austrian contingent could freely criticise the Queen without fear of reproach from their host.

As befitting a woman with significant income and royal status, Madame Adélaïde was also a passionate bibliophile, amassing a collection of 5,286 volumes per a 1777 inventory and blessed with "un désir immodéré d'apprendre [an insatiable desire to learn]," according to her tutor Madame de Campan (see Aude Péraud-Rousselet, "La bibliothèque de Madame Adélaïde," Revue française d'histoire du livre, 141 (2020): 362). Notwithstanding the impressive diversity of languages represented in the collection, from Hebrew and Dutch to Spanish and English, Madame Adélaïde's predilection for historical subjects and travel literature conveys her deep curiosity for the world. Of particular relevance in her collection is a copy of the comte de Milly's L'art de la Porcelaine (1771), the first text to publicly reveal the secret of hard-paste porcelain. The 1785 frontispiece to the catalogue of her library includes a watercolour etching, reproduced here (fig. 2) that depicts her as Minerva, goddess of Wisdom, seated next to a desk with two globes and surrounded with books. Incredibly, the frontispiece features the same white-fur barbet dog, the pug, and cat as on the snuffbox. We know that the barbet dog on the cover of the box was named "Vizir" thanks to a childhood anecdote by the Comtesse de Boigne (1781-1814) where she poignantly recalls going on daily walks with Madame Adélaïde and Vizir in the grounds of Bellevue, and competing with this beloved pet for Madame's attention (Eléonore-Adèle d'Osmond, comtesse de Boigne, Récits d'une Tante: Mémoires de la Comtesse de Boigne, vol. I, 1921, p. 72.)

The monumental ceremonial portrait of Madame Adélaïde (fig. 3), commissioned for the 1787 Salon and executed by her official painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, depicts her as a stalwart of the old Bourbon dynasty. Dressed in a crimson velvet robe à la française, a somewhat dated silhouette by the late 1780s, she places her hand on an easel holding a triple portrait cameo of her late father, mother, and brother with the inscription "Leur image est encor[e] le charme de ma vie [Their image is still the love of my life]" ostensibly inscribed by her own hand on account of the stylus she holds. The low-relief frieze depicted at the top of the painting immortalises the last moments spent by Adélaïde and her sister Victoire at their father's deathbed as he died from smallpox, a disease they too contracted but survived as a result of this act of filial devotion. The painting, exhibited at the height of anti-royalist sentiment directed mainly at Marie-Antoinette, can be interpreted as a clever political ploy designed to align Adélaïde with a much-loved French king, her father Louis XV, and further isolate the Queen, who was her rival at court.

Madame Adélaïde: lover of Sèvres porcelain

Although Madame Adélaïde's porcelain collecting has been overshadowed by that of the more prominent members of her family, namely her father Louis XV, her nephew Louis XVI, and his wife Queen Marie-Antoinette, Madame Adélaïde was one of the most important patrons of Sèvres porcelain throughout the 18th century. Beginning with her very first purchase at the manufactory, aged twenty-four, on 24 December 1756 of "Deux vases gros-bleu caillouté" (384 livres) along with a few tea wares, up until her exile in 1791, Madame Adélaïde would go on to purchase a total of 401 pieces of Sèvres porcelain at the sum total of 60,388 livres--an extraordinary figure at the time--mostly from the yearly porcelain exhibitions at Versailles held from 1758 onwards. Prior to this date, Madame Adélaïde depended almost exclusively on the marchand mercier Lazare Duvaux for her purchases.

In assessing the style of porcelain collected by Madame Adélaïde over the years, one can deduce a clear preference for porcelain with bleu-lapis grounds as well as a penchant for mounted porcelain; the convergence of both preferences in this snuffbox further bolsters its deeply personal connection to its owner. Perhaps the most indicative nod to the high regard in which Madame Adélaïde was held by the factory was the naming of a new vase shape after her in 1776; two such "vases Adélaïde" (now at Harewood House), richly gilt with polychrome flower medallions on a bleu-lapis ground were created as part of a garniture flanking a central "vase du roi" (now at the Wallace Collection, inv. C328).

For a full discussion of Madame Adélaïde's purchases at Sèvres, see Marie-Sophie Réjalot, "Les collections de porcelaine de Sèvres de Mesdames de France," HAL, 2020.

Charles Ouizille (1744–1830), Bijoutier du Roi

Charles Ouizille was the half-brother of Louis Ouizille and the last representative of a distinguished dynasty of Parisian goldsmiths that included Jean Ducrollay and Pierre-François Drais. Admitted as master in 1771, under the sponsorship of Philippe-Antoine Magimel, Ouizille established his workshop on the Quai des Orfèvres, where he remained active until 1813.

By circa 1784, Ouizille had attained the title of Bijoutier du Roi, sharing this prestigious designation with his contemporary Pierre-François Drais, with whom he entered into partnership in 1786. Following the French Revolution, he collaborated with Adrien-Jean-Maximilien Vachette and, upon the Bourbon Restoration in 1816, once again received the royal appointment. In 1826 he was entrusted with the supervision of the Crown Jewels as inspector.

Ouizille was celebrated for his refined craftsmanship, particularly in the production of gold boxes and snuffboxes. His oeuvre comprises numerous snuffboxes and small luxury objects that display a mastery of diverse goldsmithing and decorative techniques.