Snuffbox with Pastoral Scenes

The son and brother of goldsmiths, Jean-Marie Tiron received his mastership on 27 November 1748 when he registered a mark described as having the letters I M T, device a level. On 11 December 1761 he replaced this mark with another incorporating the letters I (rendered more like a J), T, and the same device. While a number of boxes by Tiron bearing his second mark are known, only two dating before 1761 have been recorded.(1) It seems likely that Tiron, who began his career as a marchand orfèvre joaillier, a jeweler and dealer in precious stones, began to specialize in snuffboxes only in 1761, registering his new mark the year he took up residence with the prominent box maker Jean Ducrollay (active 1734 – ca. 1761), whose stock he acquired at about the same time. Described as a joaillier bijoutier du roi in 1764, Tiron was listed from 1765 as orfèvre bijoutier du roi, indicating that he no longer handled diamonds, pearls, and other precious stones. Tiron retired between 1771 and 1773; his death date is surmised from the evidence of the posthumous sale of his effects in May 1793. All the miniatures but one — that on the front depicting a seated girl reading — are traceable to compositions by François Boucher (1703 – 1770). On the cover is Les Charmes de la Vie Champêtre (1737, Louvre), seen here in reverse and thus presumably copied from that period’s only recorded engraving of the painting, by Jean Daullé, 1757. The scene on the base is Le Pasteur Galant (ca. 1738, Archives Nationales, Paris) and could have been copied from one of several engravings including those of A. Laurent and Claude Duflos, both, as here, reversed. The vignette on the right end of a seated youth holding a wreath and accompanied by a pair of doves appears to be a variation of La Poésie (ca. 1751 – 55, The Frick Collection, New York). Here the boy holds a wreath absent in the original, but the composition is otherwise identical. The painting was engraved in the same direction, as it appears here, by Duflos. On the left end, a seated youth with a fishing pole is copied from an engraving by Duflos of L’Hiver (1751), a painting retitled by the engraver as Le Pêcheur. On the back, a seated girl with a wreath and basket follows an engraving by Marie-Madeleine Igonet of Le Chant, another of the Frick panels, engraved under the title L’Amusement de la Bergère. The signature, previously misread as “Martin,”(2) is possibly that of Charles-Jacques de Mailly (1740 – 1817) or of the goldsmith-enameler Barnabé-Augustin de Mailly (1732 – after 1793), who were apparently not related. Biographical details of the two, and possibly attributions of their work, have been confused, and it is even unclear whether either of them is the enameler “Maillé” said to have been mentioned in Diderot’s Encyclopédie as being active in 1754.(3) A box of 1765 – 67 by L. P. de May in the Louvre, Paris,(4) is enameled with miniatures very different in subject matter and style, bearing the signature “De Mailly f.,” so the attribution must for the present be left open. The unusual number of consecutive countermarks, customarily struck at the onset of a new tax farm, implies that the box remained unsold in Tiron’s shop until after 1781.

Catalogue entry from Claire Le Corbeiller. The Robert Collection. Decorative Arts, Volume XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 156-58.

NOTES:
1. Sale, Ortiz-Patino collection, Christie’s, London, 27 June 1973, lot 7 (1755 – 56); sale, Elizabeth Parke Firestone collection, Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1982, lot 50 (1759).
2. Norton, Richard, and Martin Norton. A History of Gold Snuff Boxes. London, 1938, p. 62.
3. Maze-Sencier 1885, p. 150. The passage remains untraced. Assuming the accuracy of the citation, it is also possible that the “Maillé” mentioned was the miniaturist Pierre-Victor-Nicolas de Malliée (or Maillée) (active 1748 – 74), whose signature is said to appear on the box by Tiron from the Ortiz-Patino collection.
4. Grandjean 1981, no. 77.

Marking: Marks:1
Inside the cover and in the base:
1. The second maker’s mark of Jean-Marie Tiron, a crowned fleur-de-lis, two grains de remède, JT, a level(2)
2. Crossed laurel branches, the charge mark for gold and small silver, Paris, 1762 – 68(3)
3. A crowned italic B, the warden’s mark for gold and small silver, Paris, 1765 – 66(4)

Inside the right bezel:
Marks 1, 2, and
4. A crowned italic A, the warden’s mark for gold and small silver, Paris, 1764 – 65(5)
On the left bezel:
5. A hound’s head, the discharge mark for gold and small silver, Paris 1762 – 68(6)
On the right bezel:
6. A slipper, the countermark for Paris, 1774 – 80(7)
7. A lyre, the mark for old work, Paris 1781 – 89(8)
8. A script V, the Dutch mark for foreign work, 1906 – 53(9)
On the left bezel:
9. A hunting horn, the countermark for Paris, 1768 – 74(10)
On the top of the hinge: Mark 8
The miniature on the cover signed, lower right: De Mailly

NOTES:
1. Certain marks have been interpreted by Charles Truman.
2. Nocq, Henry. Le poinçon de Paris: Répertoire des maîtresorfèvres de la juridiction de Paris depuis le Moyen-Âge jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. 5 vols. Paris, 1926 – 31, vol. 4, pp. 56 – 57.
3. Bimbenet-Privat, Michèle, and Gabriel de Fontaines. La datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne sous l’Ancien Régime: Poinçons de jurande et poinçons de la Marque, 1507 – 1792. Paris, 1995, no. 446.
4. Ibid., no. 461.
5. Ibid., no. 460.
6. Ibid., no. 448.
7. Ibid., no. 495.
8. Ibid., no. 512.
9. Tardy, Les poinçons de garantie internationaux pour l’or, le platine et le palladium. 10th ed. Paris, 1981, p. 246.
10. Bimbenet-Privat and Fontaines 1995, no. 478.

W.J.R. Dreesman, Amsterdam.