Sèvres plate from the Marli d'or service, given by the Emperor Napoleon to Prince Schwarzenberg, ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, in 1812

Gold border with palmettes. In the centre, a painted scene with a boy and a girl in a landscape, signed Le Guay. Ø 23.9 cm. Printed mark in red "M. Imp^le de Sevres 1811". In black: "Paul et Virginie". In gold: "13 a". Scrawled in red: "Vu Alex B". 1811.

During the Empire period, the Sèvres factory produced a number of dinner services with elaborate decoration, intended for the Emperor and his family, as well as for the high dignitaries of his Court and foreign rulers. As well as specific orders the factory's best painters were regularly handed plates to decorate as they saw fit, with figures, landscapes, cameos, flowers and other motifs. These had a solid gold ground applied around the edge, which was burnished with palmettes. The factory's list of services in production in 1813-14 (Pb.3 liasse II, travaux 1813-1814) includes the following comments which explains this practice: "No. 9 Service pittoresque marly d'or. Ce service qui n'a de caractère commun que le fond d'or rehaussé d'ornements à toutes les pièces est composé de toutes sortes de sujets peints par les meilleurs artistes dans chaque genre." (The only common element of this service is the ornamented gold ground; each piece has different subjects painted by the best artists in each speciality). The scrawled mark "vu Alex B" is the personal seal of approval by the factory's director Alexandre Brongniart. This is only found on a few pieces with high quality painting.

The decoration is taken from a scene in the romantic novel Paul et Virginie, written by Bernardin de Saint Pierre and published in 1788. It is the story of two French children living in the Ile de France (now Mauritius) whose feelings for each other gradually turn from friendship to love as they grow up, and it ends tragically with Virginie drowning in a shipwreck and Paul dying of sorrow. The scene depicted here is a moment when the youngsters reflect on the ephemeral nature of life after a particularly violent storm. The signature on a rock to the left is for Etienne-Charles Le Guay (1762-1846), son of the Sèvres gilder Etienne-Henry Le Guay. He was trained as a painter at Sèvres but went to work for Paris factories, being responsible for the famous portrait of his employer Jean-Christophe Dihl at his desk with samples of his wares. It was then that he married his second wife, the hugely talented porcelain painter Marie-Victoire Jaquotot. He returned to Sèvres during the Empire period. A recent exhibition of the artist's drawings on paper (Galerie Alfa, Paris, 2003) showed a very similar scene with Paul carrying Virginie across a torrent, with the figures having the same features as on this plate.

This was one of three plates decorated by Le Guay in 1811 with scenes from Paul et Virginie. They then formed part of marli d'or part service included in the gift made by order of Napoleon on 5 May 1812 to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Paris ambassador of the Emperor Francis I. Schwarzenberg had been responsible for the successful negotations that led to the marriage of Napoleon to Francis' daughter Marie-Louise in 1810. Further plates from this set of 48 are in the collection of Richard Baron Cohen (Twinight no. 60).

Tiny area of wear to the gilding in the inner well at 1 o'clock.

Stock Ref: WS 266

Price: on application