An Important American Private Collection
A Four-Colour Gold and Enamel Snuff Box, Hanau, circa 1820/1825
Auction Closed
June 17, 06:12 PM GMT
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
rectangular, the lid set with an enamel plaque painted with an animated stag hunt below cloudy skies, two hunters pausing for a break by a thundering stream in the foreground, attributed to Jean-David Berneaud, flanked by chased flower sprays and outer scrollwork and rose borders on a sablé ground, the baluster sides and base similarly decorated around central zig zag and reeded engine-turning, the interior of the lid possibly later engraved with an inscription reading: 'Bonaparte à. s. Alexandre Davy Dumas', rubbed maker's mark within Hanau rosette, the left rim numbered: 2955,
9cm., 3 ½ in. wide
Probably Ball & Graupe, Berlin, 17 December 1927, lot 134
This box is very likely to be the ‘gold box with decoration en quatre couleurs, the lid with a mountainscape in enamel’ sold at Ball & Graupe in Berlin in December 1927. The measurements, description, and marks — including their identification as Hanau hallmarks according to Marc Rosenberg — all correspond, as does the fact that the family collection to which this box belongs was assembled in the 1920s.
Finely painted mountainscapes in combination with elaborately chased varicolour gold work was at the height of fashion in the 1820s which would make a presentation by Jérôme Bonaparte (1784-1860) to the French playwright and novelist Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, to name but a few, far more likely than an involvement of Napoléon Bonaparte who died in 1821. Alexandre Dumas had a special relationship with Jérôme Bonaparte throughout his life, such as being an educational chaperone for Jérôme Bonaparte’s son on his Grand Tour in 1844. It was probably on one of these later occasions when Dumas was presented with the present box dating to the 1820s.