COUSTIERS comes next to Nevers and Rouen as the third greatest centre of the manufacture of French faience: its influence, like that of Rouen, was widespread, and particularly affected the factories of the south of France and even of Spain.

So says the late M. Ed. Garnier in his history of ceramics, and the statement would be perfectly correct if in the first place it put Moustiers on a level with Nevers, and if in the second place it did not omit to mention Marseilles, to which we owe some of the most precious pieces of faience and porcelain in existence. Indeed, I know nothing more perfect than certain examples from the factories of Robert, Savy, and the Veuve Perrin, some fine specimens of which are to be seen in the museums and more particularly in the private collections of the south of France.

If the general public in Paris has till lately been almost entirely ignorant of the marvellous productions of the factories of Provence, the reason is to be found in their scanty representation in our museums. The Louvre owes its finest specimens of Moustiers and Marseilles to the Giraudeau bequest, which only dates from 1896. The Cluny is equally lacking in pieces of note; and since none of those it has are catalogued under the name of the maker who signed them, they prove of very little educational value to the public. The museum at Sèvres, on the other hand, has a more complete set of examples, but there again it is often necessary to fall back on private collections for more exhaustive evidence on the history of the Moustiers faience.

As I said above, it is the collections, old and new, at Marseilles that enable us to fill up the in the museums. The present gaps

1 Translated by Harold Child.

writer has spent some time in Marseilles and constantly visited the most complete collection of Moustiers faience, that of M. Arnavon, the dispersion of which on the death of its owner is much to be regretted. He has also given protracted study to the fine collection of M. Charles Roux, a former deputy for Marseilles now living in Paris; and it is by frequent contact with these learned collectors, reinforced by the study of other Marseilles collections,2 that he has been enabled to establish certain facts that may possibly complete or throw light on the work already done on this interesting subject.

Elsewhere, in a study of the faience of Marseilles, I have tried to show its origin and starting-point, and to disprove certain legends concerning its history. I will try to do the like here for Moustiers. There are two different versions of the date at which the making of faience on white enamel at Moustiers began. M. Davillier, in his book on the history of the faience and porcelain of Moustiers and Marseilles, adopts the opinion put forward in 1858 by Dr. Bondil of Moustiers. Bondil states that about the beginning of the eighteenth century a monk in the monastery of Moustiers made known to Peter Clérissy the means of obtaining an opaque white enamel for covering faiences. M. E. Fouque, on the other hand, in his learned work on the faience of Moustiers, says that in 1686 another Peter Clérissy discovered and practised the process of first covering pottery with an opaque white enamel, and then decorating it with blue paint. The latter account is the right one, as we learn from contemporary evidence. Madame de Sévigné, who, as we know, lived at Grignan, the magnificent seventeenth-century castle which is now a noble ruin in the possession of the count de Castellane, was constantly Among the most important may be mentioned those of MM. Mante, Zarifi, Fritsch-Estrangin, Ricard, Prat, and Grobet.

2

travelling about this part of France.

On one of her journeys she came to Lambesc, the seat of the parliament of Provence, and in one of her witty letters she speaks of a meal she ate there, at which the service consisted of the beautiful faience of Moustiers. Her last journey took place in 1694, and it is absolutely certain, therefore, that Clérissy's discovery must date from some years earlier, for his first efforts could never have reached the perfection necessary to rouse the admiration of a woman accustomed to the magnificence of the court of Louis XIV. We may say, then, with practical certainty, that Clérissy's first attempts dated from the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

It is a curious fact, full of possibilities of confusion, and certainly responsible for misleading many, that almost at the same moment there was another Clérissy at Marseilles. We know it from a dish in the old Davillier collection which is signed:

A. CLERISSY

A ST. JEAN DU DESERT3 1697 A MARSEILLE.

may

What family connexion there have been between this A. Clérissy of Marseilles and his contemporary Peter Clérissy of Moustiers, I have been unable to discover, and perhaps will never be known. In any case the Clérissy of Marseilles was certainly not a native of Moustiers, for the archives of Marseilles contain the name of a notary Clerici in the fifteenth century. Possibly he was their common ancestor, or possibly we may conclude—and I am very much tempted to do so that they were not related at all. The vague resemblance that exists between the pieces made by the two will permit no conclusions to be drawn with certainty about their relationship, for it is not surprising that striking analogies should be found in the same province at the same date. I am aware that an argument for their relationship may also be based on the fact

St. John of the Desert is a suburb of Marseilles, where pottery of a coarse kind is still made.

that at Moustiers, as at Marseilles, dishes were decorated with subjects taken from the work of the Italian painter Tempesta, which is perfectly explained by the vogue enjoyed by that artist in the north of Italy and Provence. But Marseilles was less faithful to the imitation of Tempesta, preferring to take its subjects from the Bible, and, even when it took them from the painter, reproducing them in very different colours. While the hunting-scenes on the Moustiers dishes which are reproduced here, and to which we shall return, are painted in blue on white enamel, Marseilles had already begun to display the wonderful polychromy which she was to bring to perfection, and to decorate her dishes with yellow tints or manganese violet,5 the latter shade often forming the outlines of the objects. We see this in the two chemists' vessels reproduced here, which belonged to the Arnavon collection. That on the right is by A. Clérissy of Marseilles, that on the left by P. Clérissy of Moustiers. The essential differences that separated the ceramics of the two schools, and were to separate them still further, are already perceptible in these two vases: the Moustiers is a little clumsy in shape, as befitting the coarser art of a mountain race; the Marseilles is more graceful, as springing from a Greek race strongly tinged with Latin blood. The two schools remain to be considered solely in their relation to one another, but the development of the subject would carry me beyond my present limits.

The origin of the faience of Moustiers, therefore, dates from Peter Clérissy I (1652–1728). One cause of the quickness with which it reached perfection was the check placed on the manufacture of plate in 1672 by the sumptuary laws of Louis XIV; the pieces that came from the goldsmiths' shops were burdened with a very heavy tax, and a fresh ordinance of

4 Page 471.

5 The yellow which Robert was to bring to perfection, or the warm and beautiful violet of Fauchier.

6 Page 467. One of them was bought at the Arnavon sale by M. Besseneau of Angers.

the king in 1689 compelled the nobles and bourgeois to take all the plate in their possession to the mint to be converted into bullion. They were obliged to replace it on their sideboards and dressers by pottery; and this was the origin of the richness of this faience and the success achieved by the finest pieces.

Peter Clérissy found a valuable collaborator in Viry, who began the reproduction on faience of the works of Tempesta, a Florentine painter of the eighteenth century, and those of Frans Floris. To these two potters must be attributed some of the large hand-basins, standing on feet in the form of lions' paws ornamented with scallops or arabesques, and representing mythological subjects. To them also belongs the credit of the superb dishes with hunting-scenes, like the example in the Sèvres museum representing a battle between Christians and Saracens, signed G. V. F. (G. Viry fecit) and F. V. F. In the Arnavon collection there were six very fine dishes with hunting-scenes in blue camaieu," two of which are given here, both after designs by Tempesta.3 One is a very highly finished representation of bustardhunting. The other, a stag-hunt, is richly decorated with scallops and lace on the rim, and has a more important framework round the central subject. There is another of these dishes, representing 'The Good Samaritan,' in the Borély museum at Marseilles, with the inscription:

'G.Viry fit à Moustiers. chez Clérissy.1711.'

To the same makers we also owe six large very full-bellied urns, like the one reproduced here, and like several which may be found in the possession of the old Marseilles families.

7 There were some dishes of the same kind, signed Viry, at the Antiq sale in 1895.

8 Page 471.

9 The museum in the Borély park is chiefly composed of Phoenician, Greek, and Roman antiquities discovered near Marseilles; it contains also an Egyptian collection and some fine Provençal furniture and pottery.

Old Moustiers Ware

All these pieces by the elder Clérissy are decorated in blue, often delicately shaded and generally not so dark as in the Rouen dishes. The first attempts at the use of a number of colours are extremely rare; the Arnavon collection had two examples, and the Borély museum has another. To a certain extent they recall Della Robbia ware. One of these panels represents St. Joseph, half-length and in profile. Under his left arm he holds his blue cloak which lies in broad folds; his right hand is holding the lily. His tunic is green with a yellow lining. The picture is surrounded with a framework of green leaves, edged with white and yellow, on a blue ground. The bust of the Virgin, like the Joseph, is life-size. The beautiful tones of her orange-yellow robe, which has red lights on the folds and is edged with a red ribbon at the neck, make up a magnificent and very rich ensemble of colours. 10

These two makers of faience were succeeded by Peter Clérissy II and J. B. Viry, the son of G. Viry (who died in 1720). We have now reached the period of the Regency style, the decoration of dishes has become lighter, and hunting-scenes and battles are being replaced by graceful mythological subjects. The paintings of Moustiers were under the influence of John Bérain, Picard, and B. Toro of Toulon.

About 1736 an event of some importance occurred in the history of Moustiers. The Spanish ambassador, the count of Aranda, obtained leave from the king to take some workmen from Moustiers to his faience manufactories at Alcora, to teach his workmen the secrets of Provençal pottery. Among them was Olérys, one of Clérissy's most able assistants. Olérys brought back from Spain the secret of the polychromatic faiences, of which a fine example appears in a plate in the Giraudeau bequest in the

10 These two superb pieces are the property of M. Gavoty of Marseilles Reproduced on page 469.

Louvre, and joined with one Laugier in setting up a faience factory at Moustiers, which lasted with great success from 1738 to 1749. To that factory we owe two of the most beautiful pieces of Moustiers we have ever seen, the water-jug and basin reproduced here," which were once in the possession of M. Gamel, a former president of the civil tribunal of Marseilles, whose family sprang from the Basses-Alpes. The decoration is polychromatic, with landscapes, figures, and flowers. The lid, which is attached to the jug by a pewter mount, shows Diana at her toilet; the neck of the jug, which is vase-shaped, is decorated with rich garlands of flowers, and the lip with ornaments. The belly is entirely occupied by a landscape with male and female fauns playing in it. The rim of the basin is slightly curved over, and the edge is also decorated with wreaths and ornaments; the middle is occupied by a landscape representing Leda sitting at the foot of a tree and calling the swans. Above her is Cupid aiming an arrow at her.'

12

These pieces, like most by the same makers, are signed, contrary to Clérissy's custom, with their mark, an O crossed by an L. When the eleven years of their partnership came to an end, Olérys worked for a number of makers of faience from 1749 to 1783.

On being ennobled by Louis XIV and granted the office of councillor to the parliament of Provence, Peter Clérissy II gave up his factory to Fouque; but by that time the decadence had set in. The actual value of the pottery, the white of the enamel and the richness of the polychromatic colouring (the secret of which was by then in the possession of many factories) continued to be admirable; but the fault of the pottery of that date lies in its subjects and the increasing vulgarity and looseness of its drawing. Olérys himself, who in certain pieces could equal and possibly excel the most celebrated and popular productions of French faience, so far transgressed as to give way in his later years to mannerism.

The rise of the Moustiers faience, as we have seen, was sudden, and so was its decline. The French Revolution, which destroyed so much that was admirable in France, killed the art pottery of Moustiers for ever.

I once had the curiosity to visit the site of this once-flourishing city. It is nothing now but a country town, lost in the Basses-Alpes, and surrounded with picturesque and romantic crags rising from deep valleys. The only thing that recalls the great faience factories of the past, which for a time formed the wealth of the province, is the earth beneath one's feet-the earth that is so admirably adapted to the needs of the ceramic industry.