Fountain with basin (Fontaine à roseaux); soft-paste porcelain, silver and bronze
Vincennes, 1755

This fountain of soft-paste porcelain is among the most striking objects from the Vincennes manufactory – and also within The David Collection. It was acquired in Paris in 1930 by the museum’s founder, C. L. David, who was very fond of it. In an interview, he stated: ‘One of my finest pieces of French porcelain, a fountain of soft-paste porcelain, I saw at an exhibition at the Louvre … It is the best French porcelain I have.’¹

The fountain has a flattened, pear-shaped body with a cover and two handles, and rests on a gilt-bronze base with rocaille motifs. The spout is modelled as a dolphin and positioned so that its outlet aligns with the rim of the accompanying basin. The body of the fountain is decorated in relief with reeds and bulrushes, as well as shells and branches of coral. The painted decoration is executed in blue camaïeu and consists of floral garlands, rocaille ornaments and a large mirror monogram of two interlaced Ls on the front of the fountain. The upper edge and cover are fitted with silver bands, while the finial of the cover is adorned with a gilt porcelain branch surrounded by open cockle shells, modelled in such a way as to create the illusion of water flowing from them. The gently curving grooves on the body of the fountain may be understood as a visual reference to ripples on the surface of water.

The fountain was created by Jean-Claude Duplessis (c. 1699–1774), who from the late 1740s was the Vincennes manufactory’s most important designer and creative driving force. As head of modelling, he set the direction for the manufactory’s formal language and aesthetics, and he had a decisive influence on the artistic profile that came to characterise Vincennes in the mid-eighteenth century. Duplessis originally trained as a goldsmith and worked also as a sculptor, bronze founder and designer. He continually experimented with new forms and types, and his works are characterised by an extravagant and imaginative Rococo idiom in which plastic richness and technical virtuosity go hand in hand.²

Duplessis’s fountain is known in two variants with the same basic form, but with variations in the surface decoration.³ The earliest traces of the fountain are two profile drawings dated 6 March 1754 and inscribed ‘pour Mme la Dauphine’, suggesting that the fountain was intended for Maria Josepha Carolina of Saxony (1731–1767), who was married to Louis XV’s eldest son, Louis Ferdinand (1729–1765).⁴ That same year, the models and moulds were made, and the journals of the Vincennes manufactory record the firing of a fountain and several basins in December 1754. Only a very limited number of fountains were produced – probably no more than six or seven – among them the fountain in The David Collection. At least four were delivered to the court at Versailles in the years 1755–56.⁵