- Museum number
- 1928,0718.9.CR
- Description
-
Figure of a Faun Holding a Kid; biscuit soft-paste porcelain with slight smear glaze, flat base; the figure is apparently hollow and was possibly slip-cast; the young man, naked except for a fig leaf, holds a kid in the crook of his left arm, its crossed forefeet in his right hand; depending from a thong attached to the tree trunk on which its body is supported, are a bell, cymbal and horn; maker's mark.
- Production date
- 1765-1789 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 22.40 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
-
- Curator's comments
- The group is closely based on a plaster by Jacques-François-Joseph Saly (1717-76) for whom the incised mark stands.
Bibliography: Daydi 1953 Vol.II, p.191, fig.76; British Museum Quarterly Vol.III no.2 1928, pp.35-8, pl.XX; Charles 1964 fig.56A; Honey 1949 pl.139B; Honey 1950 p.47.
Text from Dawson 1994:
The group is closely based on a plaster by jacques-François -Joseph Saly (1717-76) for whom the incised mark stands. Saly exhibited the plasterat the Salon du Louvre of 1750 in Paris. The plaster model was approved by the Académie de France and Saly was requested to execute a marble, on the basis of which he was unanimously received as an Academician on 29 May 1751. The marble was shown at the Salon du Louvre in the same year, where it enjoyed great success. It was admired by Count Caylus and Baron Grimm, and La Live de Jully was one of the many collectors who owned an example of the group. (Louis Réau in 'Le Faune au Chevreau de Saly', Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art française, 1924, pp. 7-8, quotes Caylus' unaccustomed praise in the Mercure de France: 'M. Sally [sic] a exposé en marbre le petit Faun, qu'il a donné à l'Academie pour son morceau de réception . Ce jeune et brillant artiste a été loué avec raison sur la choix de la nature qu'il a saisie et rendue convenable à son sujet: c'est en effet un faune, un pâtre , un homme de l'a compagne, mais c'est un jeune homme que tous les rapports rendent noble et agréable. Les accompagnements de cette figure ont prouvé que, si l'auteur savait rendre la chair, il savait aussi couper la marbre avec une délicatesse singulière).The original terracotta was in his sale in 1770 (La Live de Jully sale, Paris, 5 March 1770, postponed until May1770, Lot 193, 'Un Faune qui tient un chèvre; c'est le modèle fait à Rome pour le marbre que l'Auteur a executé à l'Académie de France pour son Morceau de réception'. It fetched 17 livres. As Réau pointed out [see n. 4], it is not in fact based on the Faun with Kid, also known as the Queen of Sweden's Faun now in the Prado, Madrid, illust. F. haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, the lure of classical sculpture, 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp.211-212). The marble is now in the Musée Cognacq- Jay, Paris; it was disposed of by the Louvre Museum in 1821 (Collections Léguées à la Ville de Paris par Ernest Cognacq, catalogue compiled by E. Jonas, Paris, 1930, no. 249, illus. The marble once belonged to Count Potocki). A plaster , presented by Saly himsef in 1769 in recognition of his election as an honorary member of the St Petersburg Academy in the previous year, was in the Academy of St Petersburg in 1924 (L. Reau, op. cit. pp.6-15, and L. Reau, 'Le Hébé de Saly', ibid., 1927, pp. 8-11, where the author claims that the group was 'finalment recueilli dans la collection Cognacq'. Ernest Cognacq died in February 1928).
The initials TDL stand for Terre de Lorraine. Paul Louis Cyfflé (1721-1806), who founded the Lunéville factory in 1765, (The fullest treatment of Cyfflé's career can be found in an unpublished thesis by Noël, 1961, passim,. A complete bibliography of Cyfflé is included in this work. A brief biography by Noël can be found in Dictionaire de Biographie Française, Paris, 1961, Vol. IX, fasc. 54, col. 1448s) was authorised by Bertin, Minister of the King's household, in 1769 to continue making his composition on condition that pieces were sold under that name. Cyfflé himself called his porcelain composition pâte de marbre, thus anticipating names such as 'statuary porcelain (Copeland) and 'Carrara' (Wedgwood), given in the mid-nineteenth century by English makers to their soft-paste porcelain most commonly known as Parian, also used to reproduce works of sculpture. Cyfflé's composition has been characterised as a pipe clay (terre de pipe) to which a considerable amount of 'phosphate de chaux produit par la calcination des os de moutons' was added (P. Marot, Le musée historique lorrain, guide du visiteur, Nancy, 1948, p. 61. The autor is grateful to Claire Aptel for this reference), but at least one example of TDL, apparently of hard-paste porcelain (see cat. 213, n. 30 has been discovered. W.B. Honey drew sattention to the fine workmanship figure of a faun (Honey, 1950, p. 47). The clay used probably came from the Lunéville region on the evidenceof two rows of samples kept in a drawer by a local man, Dr Gaillardot, documented in his manuscript catalogue (Charles Antoine Gaillardot [1774-1833] was a military surgeon. The catalogue dated 23 August 1878, is preserved in the Biblioteque de Lunéville , and lists the contents of the two rows on f. 10, no. 10, '16 échantillons de diverses argiles du pays recherchesque m. Gaillardot sur les terresdont se servit le statuaire Cyfflé, qu'il dénommait terre de Lorraine'. Information from Noël, 1961, p. 95).
Biscuit and painted versions of this figure were manufactured at Copenhagen, apparently around 1781 (See S.B. Fredstrup, Figurer og andre plastie arbejder fra den Konegelidge Porcelains/fabrik i perioden 1780-1820, Copenhagen, 1939, F 13, 14 and G.A. Rust, Collectors' Guide to Antique Porcelain, London, 1973, p. 75, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History, inv. 1476).
Nina Birioukova stated that a hard-paste porcelain figure modelled at the Sèvres factory in 1769 was based on the same source (See Birioukova, 1962, pl. 51), but there are some significant differences. A plaster (see fig.203a) measuring about 22 cm preserved at the Sèvres factory was illustrated by Pierre Ennès in his discussion of the porcelain table-centre made at the royal factory for the dinner (P. Ennès, 'Le surtout de marriage en porcelain de S 0232vres , du Dauphin, 1769-1770, Revue de l'Art, June 1987, no. 76, pp. 63-73, fig. 22), given for the marriage of the Dauphin and Marie-Antoinette in May 1770.
The model in which the faun holds the goat under his arm was also made in earthenware at Toul (This model is shown on one of a series of postcards used in the early years of the twentieth century as a factory 'pattern book'. It was called Le Berger Salise, meaasured 22 cm and cost 10 francs. For further details and a price list issued slightly earlier by J. Aubry, director at Toul, in which a 'faune' 25 cm high cost 9 francs, see M. Noël, 'la faiencerrie de Toul et les Terres de Lorraine', Etudes Touloises, no. 11, 1978, fasc. 1, pp.13-27)
- Location
- On display (G47/dc1)
- Condition
- Chip to animal's left ear.
- Acquisition date
- 1928
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1928,0718.9.CR
