Pair of Chinese clair de lune celadon porcelain vases

A pair of late Louis XV gilt bronze-mounted Chinese
clair de lune celadon porcelain vases – circa 1760-1765 

The porcelain Qianlong Period (1736-1795)

Height: 31.5 cm. (12 ½ in.)  Width: 13.9 cm. (5 ½ in.)  Depth: 11.9 cm. (4 ¾ in.)

Provenance

Collection of Félix Doistau, sold Lair-Dubreuil, galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 9-11 June 1909, lot 291

Comparative literature

Two other identically mounted pairs of vases are known:

• A pair in Chinese mauve porcelain formerly in the collection of Jean-Baptiste de Machault d’Arnouville (1701-1794), sold Christie’s London, 9 July 2015, lot 22
• A pair in Chinese green celadon porcelain, sold Hotel Drouot, Paris, Etude Thierry de Maigret, 2 December 2011, lot 183

Félix Doistau (Paris 1846-1936)

Son of a distiller and himself a liqueur manufacturer in the Parisian suburb of Pantin from 1873 on, Félix Doistau developed into a great collector and generous benefactor of the Louvre. From 1903 he offered works to enrich the departments of Islamic Arts and then of Objets d’art, to which in 1906 he lent a large part of his miniatures collection and also items from the Middle Ages. In 1919 this loan turned into a donation with 169 miniatures permanently joining the Louvre collections along with champlevé Limoges enamels, seventeen ivories, silverware and bronzes. Doistau continued his patronage up until 1929.

Passionate about all the arts, he also donated to other Parisian museums: the Musées Guimet, Carnavalet, and Arts Décoratifs; to the museum at Sèvres and to the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire valley. Proof of this particular attachment to museums, he was appointed vice-president of the Société des Amis du Louvre, the Société des Amis du Luxembourg, member of the board of directors of the Central Union of Decorative Arts and of the Carnavalet museum.

Doistau generously lent to major exhibitions across many fields of art, such as the Paris Exposition universelle of 1900 and the one in Turin in 1911. Some of his many Chinese porcelain pieces were included in the important exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1911, La Chinoiserie en Europe au XVIIIe siècle.