A French Royal silver tureen and cover from the Penthièvre-Orléans service, the cover, Antoine Sebastien Durant, Paris, 1752-1753, the tureen, Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot, Paris, circa 1821

the cover, shaped circular, surmounted by duck and parsnip sculptural finial, applied circa 1821 with the arms of Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, flanked by cherub and bulrushes, the tureen of bombé form similarly applied with the Orléans coat of arms, raised on celery supports, with applied leaves and celery stalk handles, liner, Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot, Paris, circa 1821, heater and heater cover, Charles-Nicolas Odiot, Paris, 1826-1838

Most probably acquired from Henry Janssen (1701-66) by
Louis-Charles de Bourbon compte d’Eu (1701-75) by descent to his cousin
Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre (1725-93) to his daughter
Louise-Marie-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre (1753-1821) who married in 1769
Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orléans (Philippe-Egalité) (1747-93) to their son
Louis-Philippe, King of the French (1773-1850) by descent to
Emmanuel duc de Vendôme (1872-1931) who married
Henriette de Belgique (1870-1948)
Charles, duc de Nemours (1905-1970)
This present cloche and stand were purchased directly from the Orléans family circa 1949 by Jacques Favre de Thierrens, grandfather of the present owner.

Maker's mark lacking. (Durant's mark is also not on the dish cover in the Louvre and the example in the Robert Balkany collection; it is on all the other dish covers) The present lot, and the other dish covers in the service, are struck with an additional mark of an acorn, which has been identified as a mark of reconnaissance used for gold and small silver to which new pieces have been soldered between 1756 and 1774. See Michele Bimbenet Privat, La Datation de L'Orferfverie Parisienne, Paris, 1995
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This cloche is one of four known, from the only French royal silver dinner service still in existence.  Of the three other covers of this shape and size, one is in the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels (Fig.4), one is in the Louvre (Fig.5) and the fourth has recently been identified in a private collection.

The cloche belongs to the `Penthièvre-Orléans’ service which holds a unique position being ‘miraculeusement preservé…aujourd’hui le seul ensemble qui permette d’apprécier la splendeur, l’éclat et le raffinement de l’argenterie de la cour de France¹

The majority of the relatively small number of pieces that have survived to this day are in major museums such as the Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Detroit Museum, the Gulbenkian, The Philadelphia Museum of Art or The Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels (see below).²

Unlike other French royal services, the Penthièvre-Orléans’s survived periods of revolution and the state’s regular need for emergency cash, when the privileged were expected to donate their silver to the mint for coinage. Somehow it also survived the meltings due to changes of fashion, described in the mid-18th century as ‘ces fonts déplorables étaient extrêmements fréquents et on peut affirmer que les orfèvres de Louis XV ont détruit presque autant d’objects qu’ils produisirent’³.

The Penthièvre-Orléans service is an amalgamation of the product of various Parisian Goldsmiths including Thomas Germain, Claude Ballin II, Edme-Pierre Balzac, Robert-Joseph Auguste and Antoine Sebastian Durant, covering a period from circa 1728 to circa 1770. It includes such well-known pieces of French dining silver as the tureens by Thomas Germain with boar’s head handles of 1733-34 (fig.9), the dish covers by Durant from the early 1750’s (fig.5 to 8) and the tureens by Balzac of 1757-59 which were the model for Odiot’s 19th century additions (fig.10), when the Orléans arms were added by Louis Philippe (King of the French 1830-1848).

The Hunting Imagery

Sculptural hunt-related finials, including animals and vegetables, were a regular feature of the best French silver of the mid-18th century, and Durant was one of its great exponents.  Amongst the evidence for this beyond the Penthièvre-Orléans service are the tureens made for the King of Denmark, in 1749-50, one of which includes a hooded falcon perched on a duck similar to the present example.⁴ The dish cover with its hunting theme was an appropriate acquisition for the duc de Penthièvre, who became Grand Veneur de France [master of the Royal Hunt] in 1737, one of the great offices of the Maison du Roi. Louis XV, his godfather hunted whenever possible, both on horseback and with the gun. So large were the bags that on one day, 19th August 1738, one thousand seven hundred head of game were killed on the Plaine de St Denis, north of Paris.⁵ Just as the king loved to hunt he loved to look at pictures of hunting and filled his palaces with images by the official painters, Alexandre Francois Desportes (1661-1743) and Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755).

Both painters produced images combining silver objects with game, fruit and vegetables. Desportes’s silver tureen with peaches, (fig.10) probably depicts items from the Penthièvre-Orléans service.  Oudry’s connections to the artistic world of the goldsmith are well known⁶ and images from his paintings can be directly related to existing silver items such as Loup pris au piège  from 1732 (Statliches Museum, Schwerin Inv. G213). This image is repeated on a silver surtout (Nicholas Roettiers, 1734-35. Louvre), made for Louis XIV’s grandson the duc de Bourbon (1692-1740). It seems likely that Roettiers saw the painting in Oudry’s studio, as it was not sold by the artist till 1739.⁷ Oudry’s influence on the Penthièvre-Orléans service can be plainly seen in the fox and cockerel finial, on one of the Durant dish covers (see fig.7). This is modelled after his Fox in the Poultry Yard of 1748 (Wallace collection, London).

Antoine-Sebastien Durant

The traditional spelling of the goldsmith’s family name Durand, is considered by the most up to date research to be incorrect, at least in terms of the goldmsith’s own wish. The silver tureens for the Danish crown are signed Durant and in his marriage contract, where the notaire has written Durand, in each instance the last d has been replaced with a t.  Considerable biographical information on Antoine-Sébastian Durant (1712-1787) has been uncovered, including his traumatic early life and influence of his sister Anne and her husband the goldsmith J-B Tripart; This and information on his career, wealth and clients can be found in a Communication by Françoise Arquié-Bruley, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français, 1995, pp. 165-185.

Penthievre ownership and earlier

The origin of the service has not been fully resolved. It is first documented in an inventory of Louis XIV’s grandson, the duc de Penthièvre (Fig.2 in family tree), taken in 1794, subsequently passing down the generations of Bourbon and Orléans royal family members.  The duc de Penthièvre was one of the richest men in France, deriving his wealth, as heir to two legitimized sons of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan; his father and his uncle, respectively the comte de Toulouse and the duc de Maine. He inherited his uncle’s wealth, because the latter’s son the comte d’Eu died without issue leaving the duc de Penthièvre as his heir. 

An inventory of the duc de Penthièvre’s plate taken in 1757, records thousands of marks of silver, but none of it including the surviving Penthièvre-Orléans service. This suggests that it was not inherited from his father who had died in 1737.⁸
His cousin and legator, the comte d’Eu was still alive at the time and although no documentary record has been published to prove it, appears to have been the conduit for the silver. This is supported by circumstantial evidence which suggest that the comte d’Eu purchased elements of the service from a certain Henry Janssen or his heirs.

The evidence for this purchase includes the existence of an earlier coat of arms on the cloche by Durant in the Musée Royaux d’art et d’Histoire in Brussels, identified as that of Janssen; it includes the association of Janssen with the boar’s head tureens by Thomas Germain in the service. Models for these were kept by Germain’s son Francois-Thomas and are recorded in his workshop in 1765 as ‘M de Janssin [sic]'⁹; And finally an account written around 1803  of the life of the duc de Penthièvre which records that his uncle the comte d’Eu had purchased a service for 50 persons from ‘un Anglois nomme le comte de Jansin qui avoit l’honneur d’être admis a sa cour’¹⁰. Madame Guénard's account contains some inconsistencies in terms of chronology, but is a relatively contemporary account which should be taken seriously.

Her story goes that Henry Janssen was a member of the court of the Comte d’Eu. Like many others he had been ‘invited’ to give up his silver to the melt of 1759 (to help finance the Seven year’s War) and was  about to lose his recently completed service for 50 persons for which he had provided the silver metal.   He would still have to pay the goldsmith a large sum for its fashioning.  He appealed to the Comte d’Eu who stepped in to help, taking the service (and presumerably his tax obligation) off him, in return for a life annuity. When the comte d’Eu died in 1775 without issue, his cousin and heir the duc de Penthièvre inherited ‘la belle argenterie Jansin’ but also magnanimously offered to pay the Janssen family for the value of the metal.  There are inconsistencies in the detail of Madame Guénard’s account, but it is known that at Henry Janssen’s death in 1766, his silver at the Hotel de Lassay which he rented and shared with his brother Robert, although unspecified, weighed nearly 300 kilos and had been given as surety for debts. It is also recorded that shortly after Henry’s death, the comte d’Eu agreed to pay an annuity of 7200 livres against a principal of 72,000 to Henry’s brother Robert who was his heir¹¹. This sum of money is in keeping with the cost of a large and elaborate service of the time. 

An article by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger has suggested that items from the Penthièvre-Orléans service (including the boar’s head tureen) were indeed purchased by the compte d’Eu but via another source, having belonged to the Saxon minister count Brühl who himself had purchased it from the estate of the Fermier Genéral of France  François Joly de Fleury.¹²
While there appears little evidence in this article to doubt that the comte d’Eu bought the service from Janssen or his heirs, the Joly de Flory story confirms that spectacular services were on the market soon after they were made, and that people at the very top of society, to whom the impact of a great silver service was an essential part of being a great person, were prepared to buy them second hand rather than wait out the long process of commissioning a new one. 

The surviving elements of the service are known from three inventories.  Two of these were made in 1794 after the duc de Penthièvre’s death in 1793 and the third in 1850 when it was listed as Service no 1, following the death of Louis-Philippe at Claremont house in Surrey. This house had been lent by Queen Victoria after he was deposed in the revolution of 1848. In the latter inventory it is possible to identify the plate with the Odiot additions.¹³

Soon after the duc de Penthièvre’s death, at the Chateau de Bizy in Normandy, his silver was confiscated by the government from his daughter and heir Louise Marie-Adélaïde. The original intention had been to melt the silver, which was taken to the Hotel Mondragon in Paris where an inventory was made dated 9 Floreal an II (April 28, 1794) before taking it on to the mint.¹⁴ This recorded nearly 370 kilos of silver and included all the known pieces of the Penthièvre-Orleans service, surviving today

The inventory also recorded how the various items were to be stored in leather cases ‘in order not to damage them in case it be decreed that some pieces be preserved’.¹⁵  ‘Decreed’ it was, and the best pieces of the Penthièvre silver were kept back for amalgamation into a Grand Service destined eventually for use by the Directoire executif, in the Luxembourg palace.  These were recorded in an inventory also of 1794 entitled Etat et poid du Grand Service, where the 18th century elements of the Penthievre-Orleans service including the present cloche, can again be identified.¹⁶

Orléans ownership

The Directoir never had use of the Grand service of which the Penthièvre silver was intended to form such an important part.  In 1797, the duc de Penthièvre’s daughter and heir Louise Marie Adélaïde whose husband the duc d’Orléans (Philippe-Egalité) had been guillotined and herself imprisoned, won the right to have her silver returned under the terms of a law of June 28th.¹⁷ This amounted to nearly 230 kg of silver and created a dramatic hole in the Grand service, to the extent that the Directoir executive wrote to the Minster of finance protesting at its return and describing the silver  as ‘precieux par son execution’.¹⁸ Although the Directoir’s letter did not have its desired result, the silver was in jeopardy again 16 days after the duchess took possession, when she was exiled to Spain following the revolution of September 4th, 1797. Yet again it was returned to the duchess after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in July 1814 and yet again it was confiscated during the 100 days, finally returning after the king’s restoration in July 1815. On the death of the duchess d’Orléans, her two elder sons having predeceased her, the service was inherited by her third son Louis-Philippe duc d’Orléans (King of the French 1830-48) who had his coat of arms applied and extended it.¹⁹ He was deposed in 1848 and took refuge in England where he died in1850. As an exile his widow was unable to make a will in France but did sign an act of settlement which allowed her to leave what was then called the Service no 1 to her eldest surviving son, the duc de Nemours (1814-96).²⁰ Later wills are not available to follow the subsequent descent of the service, but sales were made by the family of the duc de Vendôme (1872-1931), great grandson of Louis-Philippe in the mid-20^th century.

 

Henry Janssen

Henry Janssen (1701-1766) was of Dutch extraction whose ancestor the Baron Janssen de Heez had lost his life and estates during the Dutch wars of liberation from Spain. His grandfather Theodore Janssen de Heez made a fortune in France, and his father also called Theodore brought this fortune to England, where he was naturalised and prospered, becoming a baronet in 1714 for services to the crown. He died there in 1748 leaving five sons. Of these Henry Janssen’s brother Stephen Theodore became Lord Mayor of London in 1754, while Henry himself and his brother Robert were naturalised citizens of France in 1741 and 1740 respectively, living in the Hotel de Lassay which  they rented from 1738. His notice of death records him as ancient ‘Capitaine aux Gardes Anglois’ and a naval captain thought to be Henry Janssen is mentioned in 1744, as master of the Corsair ‘La  Palme’ escorting two vessels into Dunkirk ‘Le Neptune’ and ‘La Bonne Esperance’ laden with wine, eau de vie and syrop for merchants in Ostende and Bruges.²¹ Henry is satirically referred to by the poet Alexander Pope in The Dunciad vol 4,  first published in 1728,  as someone responsible for the financial education of Youth. While in England he had relieved the young 3rd Duke of Bedford (1708-32) of £30,000 during a card playing session lasting 24 hours.²² He is mentioned in the same vein in letters between Horace Walpole and Sir Horace Mann where the latter referred to him in France as ‘that sharper’ taking money off the rich Englishman, who ‘every now and then will present himself to be eased of his thousands.²³ 

 

Jacques Favre de Thierrens

Jacques Favre de Thierrens (1895-1973), from a Franco-Swiss aristocratic family was a celebrated French fighter pilot, secret service agent and painter

The Favre de Thierrens family can be traced back to the 12th century from the Swiss Canton of Vaud, where they were granted the ‘mestralie’ of Thierrens by the Dukes of Lombardy. Some members of the family moved to France to follow Calvin, to Avignon in 1789 and then Nice in 1820. Jacques Favre de Thierrens was born in 1895 in Nimes, and after a short stay at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, he joined the Military Air School of Estampes, created in 1910 by Louis Blériot. During the First World Ward, he became an aviateur de combat. One of only 182 official Air Aces (As) in French fighter command, a designation he shared with such other illustrious aces as Guynemer, Hérisson, Navarre, Nungesser, and Paul Tarascon who despite an amputated foot was credited with 10 confirmed and 12 probable `kills’. Favre de Thierrens became commander of the famous squadron 62 Escadrille des Coqs.

 
Before the Second World War, he had joined the secret service, liasing, during it, with his counterparts in Great Britain to recruit agents for the Resistance
One of his most famous exploits was to burglarise the office of the German Ambassador to the Vichy goverment Otto Abetz,   He also saved, in extremis in 1942 almost half the archives of the French secret services, weighing around 20 tons and transporting them to the family estate at Ledenon (Gard). The house is nowadays the town hall in which a plaque has been fixed to commemorate this act.
These archives were seized by the Nazis in 1943, then passed onto Russia who finally returned them in 1991. This restitution was announced by the then French president Francois Mitterand who had worked under the orders of Jacques Favre de Thierrens during the war.

After the war, Jacques concentrated on his life-long passion for painting.  His work depicts the colourful landscapes of the South of France, and is imbued with a sense of peace and freedom in contrast to the troubled times of the war. He exhibited regularly in Paris between 1955 and 1966, as well as in the main towns of France, Geneva in 1961, Lausanne in 1965, Chicago and New York in 1962.
Silver was his second passion and he became a great expert on the identification of date letters and makers’ marks. His great friends in this venture were the celebrated experts and collectors J-Henri Baur, David David-Weil and Jacques Helft.  Paris marks were his speciality, while Helft concentrated on the provinces.  He was principal organiser of the first important silver exhibitions in Geneva in 1948 and then in Aix-en-Provence in 1954.

Jacques Favre de Thierrens was awarded: Croix de Guerre 1914-1918, Medaille de l’Aeronautique, Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, Medaille de la Resistance a La liberation, Grand officier de la Legion d’Honneur, Chevalier de l’Ordre militaire et Hospitalier de Saint Jean de Jerusalem, Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Merite and Officier des Arts et des lettres.

Sotheby's gratefully thanks the Favre de Thierrens family for their help in creating this note.

Footnotes

1. Gérard Mabille, ‘Le Service Penthièvre-Orléans’ from exhibition catalogue Versailles et les table royales en Europe XVIIème-XIXème Siècles, Chateau de Versailles, 3 November 1993-27 February 1994, p.275

2. the recorded pieces composing the Penthièvre-Orléans service are:

Thomas Germain
- A pair of wine coolers, 1727-28 (Louvre).
- Two pairs of three-light candelabra, (one pair in a private collection, 1732, the other location unknown).
- A pair of ragout dishes, 1733-34 (one in the Louvre; the other in a private collection, see Sotheby’s Monaco, June 20, 1992, lot 24).
- A pair of tureens on stands, with boar’s head handles 1733-34 (one in Detroit Institute of Arts; the other in a private collection, see Royal French Silver, the property of George Ortiz, Sotheby’s New York, Wednesday, November 13, 1996, lot 3).
- Another pair of tureens on stand (the tureens location unknown; the stands, 1729-30, in private collection, see Sotheby’s, op. cit., 1996, lot 5).
- A pair of salts, 1734-36 (Louvre).

Claude Ballin II
- A pair of wine coolers, 1744-45 (Sotheby’s, op. cit., 1996, lot 4).
Edmé-Pierre Balzac
- A pair of tureens on stands, 1757-59 (one without stand 1992, Metropolitan Museum of -Arts; the other with stand, 1763-64, Louvre, Sotheby’s, op. cit., lot 23).
- A pair of wine coolers, 1757-60 (private collection, Sotheby’s, Monaco, June 24, 1976, lot 51).
- A matching pair of wine coolers, 1759-60 (Louvre).
- Two pairs of pots à oille, 1758-59 (one pair in the Louvre; the other one in private collection).
- Four cruet stands (one, 1760-61, in a private collection; three location unknown).

Antoine-Sebastien Durant
- A pair of oval dish covers, 1750-51 (Musée Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels).
- A circular dish cover, 1750-56 (Musée Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels).
- A matching circular dish cover, 1750-56 (Louvre).
- Another, matching, 1750-51 (Robert de Balkany Collection, to be sold Sotheby’s Paris, 20 September 2016).
- A large oval dish cover, 1754-55 (Gulbenkian Foundation).
- A pair of circular dish covers surmounted by a fox and a stone marten respectively, 1756-57 (private collection).
- A pair of salts, 1758-59 (one in the Louvre; the other Philadelphia Museum of Art).

Robert-Joseph Auguste
- Four stands, 1770-71, for the pots à oille by Balzac (Louvre; and private collection).

3. Lazar Duvaux, Marchand Bijoutier ordinaire du roi. From Alexander von Solodkoff, ‘The rediscovery of a 1754 ‘‘Machine d’Argent’’ by François-Thomas Germain’, Studies in the Decorative Arts, vol. 13, no. 2 (2006) p.59 footnote 17)

4. It is not known which Danish King ordered these tureens as the first record of them in Danish inventories is in 1796. See: Exhibition catalogue, A King’s Feast, Kensington palace, 5 June-29 September 1991 p. 101 and no. 72. For another Durant tureen with elaborate bird and vegetable finial; and for biographical information on the goldsmith see: Sothebys Paris, 18th December 2002, separate catalogue for lots 134, 135 and 136, Exceptional ensemble d’Orfèvrerie par Antoine-Sébastian Durant.

5. Exhibition catalogue, Vincent Droguet et al. Animaux d’Oudry, Collection des ducs de Mecklembourg-Schwerin,  Musée national du château de Fontainbleau, 5 November-9 February, 2004, p. 15.

6. See for example his role in the acquisition of a silver centrepiece in  Alexander von Solodkoff, ‘A Lost “Machine d’Argent” of 1754 by François-Thomas Germain for the Duke of Mecklenburg,’ Studies in the Decorative Arts, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Bard Graduate Centre, Spring-Summer, 2000, pp. 122-135.

7. Vincent Droguet, 2004, p. 108.

8. Sothebys New York, Royal French Silver, the property of George Ortiz, November 13, 1996, p. 39 footnote 2.  Much of the research on the origins of the Penthièvre-Orléans service was undertaken by Stéphane Boiron and published in that catalogue, and in Sotheby's Monaco, June 20, 1992, lot 23.

9. Christiane Perrin, François Thomas Germain, orfèvre du rois, Saint-Rémy-en-L’eau, 1993, p.58.

10. Elisabeth Guénard, Vie du duc de Penthievre, t II, Paris, 1803, pp.125-127.

11. op. cit,  Sotheby's 1996, p.39 footnote 12.

12. Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Ein neues silbern Französisches Tafel Service: Linking the Penthièvre-Orléans service to Dresden, Silver Studies, 2007, pp. 123-152)

13. Op. cit. 1996, p. 42 footnote 26.

14. The document was discovered by Madame Gaborit-Chopin in the Bibliotèque Nationale. Op.cit, 1996, p. 41 footnote 19. 

15. Op.cit. 1996, p. 41 footnote 19.

16. Op.cit. 1996, p. 54 footnote 3.

17. Op. cit. 1996 p. 42 footnote 22.

18. Op.cit. 1996 p. 54 footnote 1.

19. Op.cit. 1996 p.42 footnote 24.

20. Op. cit. 1996 p. 42 footnote 27. 

21. Mercure de France, May 1744 p. 1053. Christine Perrin connects this incident and the`prises anglaises du capitaine Janssen' (also mentioned in the Mercure de France), with Henry Janssen, op. cit., p. 109

22. Georgiana Blakiston, Woburn and the Russels, London, 1980, p.98. 

23. The Yale edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, September 5 and 17, 1741.