FPS LIVING ROOM LECTURES

We are delighted to welcome Dr Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at Waddesdon Manor, who will discuss a group of vases whose decoration imitates Chinese works of art, in the context of changing, sometimes contradictory French attitudes to China. We hope you can join us!

Living Room Lecture: Circumventing the Orient: Madame de Pompadour’s ‘Chinese’ Vases and chinoiserie at Sèvres – Juliet Carey

Time: Sunday, 19 September 2021, 18:00PM London, UK (BST)

Members will receive an email invitation with instructions on how to join the online lecture. If you want to join, please contact us for more details on FPSenquiries@gmail.com.

Circumventing the Orient: Madame de Pompadour’s ‘Chinese’ Vases and chinoiserie at Sèvres

Juliet Carey

Madame de Pompadour’s garniture of ‘Chinese’ Sèvres vases, (c. 1760–63) whose pictorial decoration closely imitates Chinese works of art, in the context of technological and economic rivalries of the time, throw light on the phenomenon, affectionately mocked by contemporaries, of French disavowal of the superiority of Chinese porcelain at a time when France was still unable to make the Chinese material. These vases and their relationship to Pompadour’s wider self-presentation will be discussed alongside literary and scientific texts and compared with vases embodying quite different approaches to China, including a series of chinoiserie examples in the Royal Collection made after Sèvres had mastered hard paste. This array of objects reveals changing and sometimes contradictory attitudes to China, its people and its culture.

Image: Pair of vases pot pourri fontaine ou à dauphin, Sèvres, 1760, soft-paste porcelain, J. Paul Getty Museum (78.DE.358.2)