Painted with two children, a dog and game within a quatrefoil cartouche set against a ground of green ribbons with flowers attributed to Louis-Jean Thévenet père.

Savil notes that the plateau ‘courteille’ was first recorded in 1758, the year of our tray. The first two were sold to Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour in December 1758. The same form without handles sometimes called plateaux ‘chiffonière’ were mounted in small tables.[i] Linda Roth illustrates another plateau ‘courteille’ of the second size also painted with children by Viellard in 1758 on a pink ground in the Wadsworth Atheneum.[ii] Another with bleu céleste ribbons and birds by Armand l’ainé with the date letter for 1758 has recently been exhibited in Mia Jackson’s exhibition. ‘Flights of Fancy’ at Waddesdon Manor.

Green ribbon borders were also used on the dinner service given by King Louis XV of France to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in 1758.

The collection of Sèvres at Harewood House in Yorkshire was amassed by Edward, Viscount Lascelles (1764-1814) during the trouble years that followed the fall of the Bastille. He was one of the great generation of British collectors of Sèvres along with the Prince Regent and the third Marquess of Hertford.[iii]

Condition:
Slight wear to gilding; four rim chips restored

Provenance:

The Earl of Harewood, Harewood House, Yorkshire; sale Christie’s, London, 1 July 1965, lot 14
With Armin B. Allen, New York
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 27 November 2013, lot 35
Bought by Hugo Morley-Fletcher

[i] Savill 1988, vol, II, pp. 617 & 616. This was written before the reassignment of the date letter ‘E’ to 1758.

[ii] Roth & Le Corbeiller 2000, no. 83 pp. 175-178.

[iii] Tait 1964-1966.

References:

Roth & Le Corbeiller 2000
Linda H. Roth & Clare Le Corbeiller, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The J. Pierpont Morgan Collection, Hartford 2000

Savill 1988
Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, London 1988

Tait 1964-1966

Hugh Tait, Sèvres porcelain in the collection of the Earl of Harewood, Parts I to III, Apollo June 1964, January 1965 and June 1966

SOLD