Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot-à-oille)
designer Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (French, 1695–1750)
maker Pierre-François Bonnestrenne (French)
maker Henry Adnet (French, 1745)
1735–38
- Medium
- silver
- Classification
- Silver
- Culture
- France, Paris
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Decorative Art and Design
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This tureen exemplifies the French Rococo style, an artistic movement celebrating naturalistic forms that developed in Paris during the early 1700s. In contrast to classical, controlled symmetry, Rococo forms morph, twist, and spill into the space around them. Meissonnier embellished this tureen in a picturesque arrangement of vegetables and creatures, transforming a utilitarian object into a decadent display of wealth and abundance. This masterpiece comes from a set of two tureens commissioned by the English Duke of Kingston during an extended stay in Paris in the 1730s.
