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Lot 474
Description:
An Extraordinarily Rare and Important Collection of 400 British "White Enamel" Casts after Ancient and Modern Gem-Engravings and Seal-Impressions, c. 1820s, by James Tassie (British, 1735-1799) and William Tassie (British, 1777-1860), the individually-numbered, unattached impressions in nine shallow trays contained in a very rare deal case with drop front, original bail handles, key guard, ball feet, and brass owner's plate of "Mr. Walker [at] Bowland", case height 11 in., width 18 in., depth 12 in.
- Provenance: Provenance: General Sir Alexander Walker (1764-1831), and/or his son William Stuart Walker (1813-1896), at Bowland House, Whitehill, near Stow, Midlothian, Scotland.~ Note: The Scottish sculptor and entrepreneur James Tassie, during a sojourn as a portraitist in Dublin in 1763-66, collaborated with the scientist Dr. Henry Quin to develop a hard-finished, shiny white paste that would be more successful than the standard matte-finished plaster in casting impressions from figural gems, engraved in both cameo and intaglio. Upon perfecting his proprietary material Tassie moved to London (exhibiting at the Society of Arts and the Royal Academy from 1767 to 1791). He soon established himself as the most important European purveyor of fine casts after glyptic masterworks by ancient, medieval, and modern gem-engravers; by 1775 he had amassed some 3000 molds. In 1781 he received a commission from Empress Catherine II of Russia to supply a globally comprehensive collection of gem-impressions: utilizing virtually every cabinet in Europe, he expanded his stock to almost 16,000 items. In 1791 Rudolf Erich Raspe published his still-definitive 2-volume Descriptive Catalogue of Gem[s] Cast in ... White Enamel... by James Tassie, indexing the whole of that astonishing repertory. The commercial aspects of the enterprise were continued in London and Edinburgh by the entrepreneur's nephew, William Tassie, who retired in 1840 It would have been he, therefore, who evidently added molds to the firm's stock after the pseudo-classical gem-engravings of Prince Stanislaw Poniatowski of Poland, carved by a variety of modern masters in Rome in 1803-23 (since many stylistic cognates to the published Poniatowski gems make up the bulk of this collection of Tassie casts). The present selections of Tassie "enamels" (distinguished through their hard, glassy surfaces from the soft plaster impronte purveyed by the Roman firms of Amastini, Cades, Liberotti, and Paoletti at somewhat later dates) were evidently supplied to General Sir Alexander Walker and his wife Lady Barbara Montgomery, following the expansion of their country seat at Bowland in 1813-16 by the Edinburgh architect James Gillespie Graham. The preem nent Scots artist Sir Henry Raeburn painted a pair of grand-manner portraits of the Walkers in 1819 (now at Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand), and the related domestic "furnishing" of their Tassie impressions may have been ordered at a date not long afterward. The omission of the father's titles on the name-plate for this set, however, may possibly reflect its commission by "Mr." (later Sir) William Stuart Walker (KCB), in the ten years between his inheritance and coming of age in 1831, and William Tassie's retirement at the end of that same decade. Tassie "enamels" are intrinsically of much higher quality and decisively greater rarity than Roman plasters reproducing similar gems; this offering of a large, historically varied set with a distinguished country-house provenance is thus a collecting opportunity of the most conspicuous significance. References: Gertrud Seidmann, "Tassie, James," in The Dictionary of Art (London, Grove, 1996), vol. 30, p. 356; James Prendeville, ...Antique Gems Formerly Possessed by the Late Prince Poniatowski, 2 vols. (London, 1857-1859); Douglas Lewis, "The Last Gems ... and Their Impressions," in Engraved Gems: Survivals and Revivals, ed. C. M. Brown (Washington, 1997), pp. 292-305 Three Bowland House inventories (1836, 1850, 1860) and five household account books (1811-37), National Library of Scotland, MSS. 13964-6, 14045-6, 14051-3, may plausibly contain notices of this collection.
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October 11, 2008 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US
Neal Auction Company
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