[classical 18th music]
Male Narrator This vase from the Sèvres manufactory features a characteristic bright pink glaze. It is outstanding for its lavish surface decoration in blue enamel applied in three different patterns: the trellis pattern surrounding the front, central image; the dotted circles along each side; and the erratic intersecting lines across the back.
The distinctive shape, known as a cuvette Mahón, was devised in 1761 to commemorate a battle during the 7 Years’ War when the French captured the city of Mahón, on the island of Minorca, from the British. The central image shows a detail derived from a seventeenth-century Dutch painting called The Village Feast by David Teniers. Here, village women break up a fight between two men. Because the Sèvres artist who executed this scene used an engraved copy of the painting as his model, the colors do not correspond to the original and the image is in reverse.
J. Paul Getty also collected Old Master paintings, so this decoration of a Sèvres porcelain vessel with a Dutch genre scene would have pleased him. He bought the vase in 1972 for the museum at the suggestion of his curatorial staff.
