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Nef By Charles Lepec (1830-? after 1888) Enamel, silver-gilt and gilt-bronze 33/4 in (9.6 cm) x 41/2 in (11.5 cm) x 11/2 (4 cm) French (Paris), 1873 MARKED:
’CH
LEPEC’ and dated ‘1873’ in the decoration on the
sides, to the right and left of the putto, respectively.
The nef, a vessel in the form of a ship, was used in the later middle ages as the holder for a nobleman’s table linen or eating utensils. By the sixteenth century nefs had become prevalent as table ornaments, particularly in Germany and Switzerland (see, for example, the 1503 German ‘Schlüsselfelder’ nef in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg). The present example is a brûle-parfum (incense burner). Our nef-form brûle-parfum, including decoration emblematic of love (Venus being led by Cupid bearing a flaming torch), is a diminutive variant of one of Lepec’s masterpiece’s, the nef exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle 1867 and owned by Lepec’s greatest patron, the English collector Alfred Morrison (1821-97). The Morrison nef is now in the collection of the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe (see Daniel Alcouffe, ‘Les Emailleurs Français à l’Exposition Universelle de 1867’, Antologia di belle Arti, IV, 13/14, 1980, pp. 102-21, figs 4-5). Lepec, a pupil of the artist Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-64), was recorded in 1861 at 61, rue du Faubourg-Montmatre, Paris. In the Salon of 1861 Lepec exhibited two enamels on copper, La fortune conduite par l’amour and Clémence Isaure; Lepec also exhibited in Lyon. Works by him, some enamelled on gold were shown in the Salons of 1863-66, but by far his most important exposure appears to have been at the Paris Exposition Universelle, 1867 (see Alcouffe, op. cit., p. 104). His last recorded work in enamel is a portrait shown at the Salon of 1869 (see Pierre Sanchez, Dictionnaire des Céramistes, Peintres sur Porcelaine, Verre et Email, Exposant dans les Salons, Expositions Universelles ... 1700-1920, II, Dijon, 2005, pp. 918-19). A drawing signed by Lepec and dated 1888 raises the question of what other work might survive from the period after 1869 (see Olivier Gabet, L’objet et son double Dessins d’art décoratifs des collections du musée d’Orsay, ex’n cat., Paris, 2006, no. 36).
The present, recently rediscovered nef adds to the small number of works signed by Lepec. In addition to the large Clémence Isaure
(1866) in the collection of the musée d’Orsay, Paris,
other works include a covered tazza in the collection of the
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; a plate tazza now in the collection of
the Saint Louis Art Museum, and a pair of plates, now divided between
the collections of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Musée
Municipal de l’Evêché, Limoges; these four pieces,
all of which were exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle, 1867, were with Blairman in 1994. The ‘Visconti’ vase on stand (H. Blairman & Sons, Furniture and Works of Art, 2004, no. 11) is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and L’art Triomphant (1863) was exhibited (together with an unsigned coffret) by Galerie Roxane Rodriguez (see Emaux, Paris, 2003, unpaginated; this catalogue contains further indications about Lepec’s career).
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