Gold Boxes, Ceramics & Silver
Gold Boxes, Ceramics & Silver
A gold and enamel portrait snuff box, René-Antoine Bailleul, Paris, 1788
Lot Closed
May 26, 12:05 PM GMT
Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
A gold and enamel portrait snuff box, René-Antoine Bailleul
Paris, 1788
rectangular with cut corners, the lid later applied with an earlier oval enamel miniature of a plump gentleman, German School, circa 1710, with curling ash blonde wig and lace jabot, the ground lavishly decorated in coloured paillons with a star and trellis pattern on a translucent blue enamel ground within borders and side divisions picked out in green enamel, maker’s mark, charge marks of Henri Clavel and Jean-François Kalendrin, 1782-1789, date letter for 1788, discharge mark of Kalendrin, 1789-1792, in modern fitted red leather case
8.1cm. 3 1/4 in. wide
2
It is known that René-Antoine Bailleul was baptised in 1741 and became master from the rue de Harlay, under the patronage of his uncle, Sébastien Chéret, in 1769. He remained at the same address, selling 'le bijou' until 1781 when he moved to the quai des Orfèvres where he is recorded for the next ten years. The almanach mentions Bailleul as a jeweller and on 31st March 1774, posters were put up offering a four louis reward for the return of a lost gold box, decorated with the portrait of a girl and coloured gold trophies. Bailleul's earlier boxes are on the whole very conventional but the present box is typical of the experimental spirit fashionable in Paris in the last years of the 1780s.