Although traditionally known as the Vase Japon, this vase has nothing to do with Japan. Its history is one of reciprocal admiration between the courts of King Louis XV of France and the Qianlong emperor of China.
In the eighteenth century, even though Chinese borders were officially closed to European trade, the Chinese emperor and the French king engaged in diplomacy by exchanging gifts. While Europe acquired a taste for “chinoiserie,” the Chinese court simultaneously acquired a taste for “Européenerie.” To display a set of tapestries designed by François Boucher that had been given to him by the French king, the Qianlong emperor built a new pavilion, the so-called Observatory of Distant Oceans, at his summer palace.
As these exchanges were taking place, Henri Léonard Bertin, then in charge of the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, commissioned forty volumes of woodcuts showing some of the best objects in the Chinese Imperial Collection. He commissioned this vase in 1774, using as its model an ancient bronze vase of the Han dynasty depicted in one of the woodcuts. This vase was probably conceived as part of a set. Two very similar vases are at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, but they lack the chains adorning the piece at the Frick.
Vase Japon
Despite its name, the vase japon is an interpretation of a Chinese bronze Yu (or Hu) vase from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.). Its design and decoration derive from a woodblock print published in a forty-volume catalogue of the vast Chinese imperial collections compiled between 1749 and 1751 at the behest of the Qianlong emperor. Around 1767, a copy of this catalogue was sent to Henri Bertin, who at the time was France’s secretary of state and commissaire du roi at the Sèvres factory. The vase japon was made in 1774 along with two other vases of the same size, shape, and decoration. Each bears the mark of the gilder-painter Jean-Armand Fallot (act. 1764−90). However, of the three, only this example is adorned with a silver-gilt handle and chain, which, like its shape and surface pattern, are directly inspired by the Chinese model. The mounts bear the mark of Charles Ouizille, who, in 1784, became the official jeweler of Louis XVI.
Private collection; Sotheby’s Paris, sold 9 November 2010 (lot 199); Kugel Gallery, Paris; Purchased by The Frick Collection, 2011.
Source: Vignon, Charlotte. The Frick Collection Decorative Arts Handbook. New York: The Frick Collection/Scala, 2015.
