Provenance:
Drouot Richelieu, Paris, Anonymous sale, 21 April 1997, Lot 33, catalogue cover illustration
John Whitehead, London, 13 June 1997 (purchased at the International Ceramics Fair, London; with invoice)

Note:
Although the present sugar bowl is not a form to which a specific name was given by the Vincennes factory and although the identity of neither the painter nor the gilder can be confirmed, there can be no doubt that it is a fine early example of the royal factory’s work and of its first essays with a ground color.

An un-named drawing dated 28 April 1752 corresponding to the shape of the present sugar bowl is retained in the factory’s archives. See Porcelaines de Vincennes: Les Origines de Sèvres, Exhibition Catalogue, Grand Palais, Paris, 14 October 1977-16 January 1978, cat. no. 207 for an example of the same form, painted in monochrome green with landscape vignettes, its ranunculus knop lacking.

The gilding pattern of rose thorns is associated with the first service made for Louis XV, also decorated with a bleu céleste ground. However, neither the ground color nor the gilding pattern was exclusive to the service. Its unidentified flower painter’s mark of a 'P' or 'p' is found on Vincennes and early Sèvres porcelain of 1755-1756.