A Challenge to Good Taste
18th century Masterpieces from the Sèvres Porcelain Factory

Un défi au goût
Chefs-d'oeuvre de la manufacture de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle

From the 21st of March to the 23rd of June 1997
From 9 a.m. to 5.15 p.m., Aile Richelieu

Vase "Hebert"
1769-1770

The Sèvres porcelain factory, personal property of the King since 1759 (still a state factory) played a major role in the evolution of style in the XVIIIth century, for several reasons:

• a rigorous choice of key artists, recruited for the creation of models as well as for their execution (for example the silversmith J.-Cl. Duplessis, the painter J.-J. Bachelier, the sculptors E.-M. Falconnet et L.-S. Boizot) ;

• an energetic corporate and artistic management, closely observed by the directors of the "Bâtiments du Roi", in particular the count of Angiviller.

• the interest of the King and the court, whose insatiable taste for luxury and novelty stimulated the creative imagination of the Sèvres artists;

• almost total liberty of creation for the artists who, working under royal protection, did not feel subject to the economic contingencies of rentability.

To avoid "heavyness and the trivial", to give "lightness, subtlety, novelty and variety", those were the orders given around 1750 by the first artistic director of the factory, the academician Hendrick van Hulst; these orders were largely respected by his successors for whom the Sèvres factory was an immense territory of exploration.

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