Wall Fountain and Basin
Sceaux Pottery and Porcelain Factory (Sceaux, France)
c. 1755
- Medium
- Tin-glazed earthenware and polychrome enamels
- Classification
- Ceramics
- Dimensions
- Fountain: 47.7 × 39.4 × 26.7 cm (18 3/4 × 15 1/2 × 10 1/2 in.); Basin: 23.9 × 44.5 × 39.1 cm (9 3/8 × 17 1/2 × 15 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Sceaux
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Applied Arts of Europe
- Credit line
- Kay and Frederick Krehbiel, Harry and Maribel G. Blum, Michael A. Bradshaw and Kenneth S. Harris, Annette M. Chapin, Richard T. Crane Jr. Memorial, and European Decorative Arts endowment funds; through prior acquisition of Mrs. Harold T.…
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This fountain, sculpted in high relief and painted in bright enamel colors, exemplifies both the ambitions of the pottery established at Sceaux, south of Paris, and the exuberance of the Rococo style of mid-18th-century France. A triton (a mythological sea deity resembling a merman), a nymph, and a scampering child pose on a rocky, shell-encrusted outcrop that projects over a dolphin-like sea creature from whose open mouth water flowed. Underneath, a large shell-shaped basin enriched with reeds and bulrushes, supported by rockwork and another sea monster, receives the water that streamed from above. The shell and reed decoration, characteristic of the Rococo, here also reinforces the aquatic theme of the piece.
A pottery had existed at Sceaux from around 1739, but it only truly prospered after the arrival of Jacques Chapelle as director in 1749. Chapelle seems to have had ambitions to produce porcelain at Sceaux but was prohibited by the state from embarking on this project, so as not to compete with the newly established porcelain manufactory at Vincennes. Forced to work in faience (the French term for tin-glazed earthenware) instead, he encouraged his workers to experiment…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
