Limoges Porcelain Urn, Image Signed Fragonard. Signed in lower right of painting. Marked on underside. Glossy cobalt blue glaze. Hand painted floral decoration richly enhanced with gold painted details. Two sides have a painting of a couple sitting outside with flowers. 

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. Today many of them are found on pottery, plates, and postcards, considered exemplary examples of French style tied inextricably with the sensual mythos surrounding France and the city of Paris in particular. 

Condition: Fleabite on top rim. 

Size: 9 x 9 x 19 in. 

#3490 . 

The term Limoges Porcelain refers to hard-paste porcelain produced by factories in and around the city of Limoges, France, beginning in the late 18th Century, by any manufacturer. First established by Turgot in 1771 following the discovery of local supplies of kaolin and a material similar to petuntse in the economically distressed area at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, Limoges quickly became known for producing goods extremely similar to Chinese porcelain. This led to a manufactory at Limoges coming under the patronage of the comte d’Artois, brother of Louis XVI, and was later purchased by the King in 1784, although the French Revolution diminished production in all workshops. After the Revolution multiple private factories were established at Limoges, including Bernardaud, Haviland & Co. and Royal Limoges, and by about 1830 Limoges had replaced Paris as the main center for porcelain due to their proximity to the most ideal sources of clay, although the state-owned Sèvres porcelain near Paris remained dominant in the market for a few decades more.Limoges remains the primary hub for all porcelain production in France to this day.

Fleabite on top rim.