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An emperor of China at Versailles

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18/12/24 - Acquisition - Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon - Patience is the mother of virtue, the Versailles teams must be saying to themselves as they watched an impressive Sèvres porcelain biscuit slip away in the spring, its reappearance causing quite a stir at the Hôtel Drouot: estimated at €20/30,000 by expert Maxime Charron, this one was snapped up at Auctie’s for €170,000 hammer - €217,600 including fees - and thus easily exceeded the funds set aside by Versailles, whose emissary was in the room and could just see the bids soar. Luck smiled in the end, however, as it only took a few months for this model to appear on the market again: a new example made its timely appearance at a sale (see the news item of 16/12/24) at Artcurial, in time for Christmas!


1. Manufacture royale de Sèvres, after a model attributed to Josse-François-Joseph Le Riche (1741-1812) under the direction of Louis-Simon Boizot (1743-1809)
The Emperor of China, c. 1776
Hard porcelain bisque - 40 cm
Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
Photo: Artcurial
See the image in its page
2. Manufacture royale de Sèvres, after a model attributed to Josse-François-Joseph Le Riche (1741-1812) under the direction of Louis-Simon Boizot (1743-1809)
The Emperor of China, c. 1776
Hard porcelain bisque - 40 cm
Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
Photo: Artcurial
See the image in its page

Appraised by Cyrille Froissart, this biscuit was offered at a reasonable, or at least more coherent, estimate, which it slightly exceeded to be sold for €88,000 hammer - or €120,000 with fees - and then immediately preempted for the Château de Versailles, whose dynamic policy of enriching its porcelain collections is well known to readers of La Tribune de l’Art. This biscuit (ill. 1 and 2) was bound to be of interest to Versailles, where there were two examples at the end of the Ancien…

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