Veilleuse

Wedgwood

  • Titles Veilleuse (Descriptive)
  • Artist Wedgwood, England, est. 1759
  • Medium pearlware
  • Dimensions 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (29.2 x 21.6 x 11.4 cm)
  • Credit Line Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; The Buten Wedgwood Collection, gift through the Wedgwood Society of New York, AFI.760.2010a-c
  • Work Type warmer
  • Classification Containers

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Oval medallion with relief profile portrait of Le Princesse de Lamballe (1749-1792), Daughter of the Prince de Savoie-Carignano. Married Stanislaus, Prince de Lambelle in 1767 with him dying a year later. Marie Antoinette made her superintendent of the household with a relationship and intimate companionship which was interpreted as lesbian in anti royalist lampoons emanating from the Palais Royal. She escaped to England in 1791, she later returned to Paris to share the Queen's imprisonment in the Temple, Refusing to take an oath against the monarchy she was lynched, her head paraded on a spike and her heart eaten.
Large, heavy vase with a bulbous body resting on a small round foot, the neck cinched in the middle with a flared lip, with two long, curving, snake handles, each comprised of two separate snakes, below the handles on either side are bearded male masks, the foot is painted a dark brown color with a band of mustard yellow and a like band on the stem below the body of the vase, the neck with similar yellow bands and a green ground designed to look like marble, the snake handles are yellow with brown details; the body of the vase is elaborately painted in the round in shades of brown, green, blue, purple, yellow and white, with on one side the image of the Evangelist Luke and on the other of the Evangelist John, both adapted with slight color variations from the frescoes by Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri, Italian 1581-1641) in the Church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle in Rome, Italy, on the sides below the masks are images of angels in flight.
Head in profile right.
Coffee biggin of solid white jasper with dark blue jasper dip and applied white jasper relief decoration, the coffee pot of bulbous shape with loop handle and curved spout, the body with applied white lattice work and vignettes of classical figures, the strainer that sits atop the pot of cylindrical shape and likewise decorated with lattice work motifs and classical figures, the conforming cover similarly decorated with lattice work and small classical vignettes, including the Cupid Seller and Priam Begging Achilles for the Body of Hector, with Sybil finial, the interior of the pot is glazed.