Object Record

Sarah Bernhardt Fish & Shell Tureen

Ceramist

Edmond Lachenal

Year

1891

Material

Glazed faience with polychrome enamel decoration and sculptural relief

Dimensions

H 12.5 × W 31 × D 24 cm

Animal Classification

Fish → Marine Fish
Marine Invertebrates → Shell-Bearing Mollusks

Geographic Classification

France → Île-de-France → Châtillon-sous-Bagneux

Object Details

Marks & Inscriptions

Signed in black letters “LACHENAL” and dated “1891” on the rim of the base.

Inscribed in glazed cursive script beneath the base: “E. Lachenal à Châtillon.”

Provenance

Galerie Vauclair, Paris

Literature

Florence Slitine, La céramique d’art en Île-de-France: Ateliers et manufactures privés autour de Paris (1850–1950) (Mare Martin, 2024), p. 204, fig. 101, illustrated as "Edmond Lachenal, soupière, 1891," collection Galerie Vauclair.

Florence Slitine, La céramique d’art en Île-de-France: Ateliers et manufactures privés autour de Paris (1850–1950) (Mare Martin, 2024), pp. 202-03, section “La sculpture céramique et la céramique architecturale,” discussing Lachenal’s relief modeling of fish, gallinaceous birds, shells, lizards, and frogs, and noting that the faience service created for Sarah Bernhardt was made in a harmony of blues in 1884, exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and reissued in pale green in 1891.

Authorship & Production

Edmond Lachenal (ceramist, French, 1855–1948) at atelier Lachenal (Châtillon-sous-Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France).

Commentary

This tureen by Edmond Lachenal belongs to the celebrated faience service associated with Sarah Bernhardt. Created as part of a marine bestiary, the work occupies a rare position between functional tableware, sculptural ceramic art, and Symbolist naturalism. Its vessel form is animated by large modeled fish that serve simultaneously as handles, supports, and protagonists within the composition.

The tureen’s rounded body becomes an aquatic environment. Small fish swim across the pale surface amid blue-green currents and cloudlike marine patterns, while larger fish emerge in high relief from the sides and base. A sculpted murex shell finial rises from the lid, reinforcing the marine theme and giving the covered vessel a vertical focal point. The object does not simply depict sea life; it transforms the entire tureen into a contained underwater world.

The surface treatment is central to the work’s effect. Pale green, blue, gray, and white tones evoke shallow water, foam, and reflected light. The decoration moves across the faience body in flowing, aqueous bands, while the sculptural fish appear to surface from and disappear into this painted field. Lachenal blurs the boundary between image and form, creating a ceramic object in which marine life is both represented and structurally embodied.

The fish handles deserve particular attention. They are not appended ornaments but fully integrated sculptural elements. Their fins, tails, mouths, and sinuous bodies are carefully modeled so that they remain legible as living creatures while also performing the architectural work of the vessel. This fusion of utility and sculpture places the tureen within the category of Lachenal’s pots-sculptures — vessels transformed by modeled relief into autonomous works of ceramic art.

The history of the Sarah Bernhardt service deepens the object’s importance. Recent scholarship records that Lachenal created the original faience service in a harmony of blues in 1884. The service was shown at the 1889 Exposition Universelle and then reissued in pale green in 1891. The present tureen, signed and dated 1891 at Châtillon, belongs to that later green version.

Lachenal’s engagement with Japonisme is evident, though the work is not a literal quotation of Japanese models. Rather, it absorbs Japanese principles of asymmetry, rhythmic movement, negative space, and the integration of natural forms into utilitarian objects. The fish, shell, and watery surface patterns form a continuous visual system rather than a sequence of separate decorative motifs.

The tureen’s publication in Slitine’s La céramique d’art en Île-de-France within a discussion of ceramic sculpture rather than ordinary tableware confirms that Lachenal’s animal reliefs have been recognized by recent scholarship as central to his artistic identity. Significantly, the illustration identifies the object directly by its Galerie Vauclair provenance, establishing an unambiguous documentary link between the published work and the present piece.

The fish are not placed on the vessel; they help create it. In that sense, the tureen anticipates later Art Nouveau ceramics in which animal, ornament, function, and sculpture collapse into a single organic form.

Related Works

The tureen belongs to Lachenal’s Sarah Bernhardt faience service, a marine-themed ensemble incorporating fish, shells, and related aquatic relief elements. The service was originally created in blue in 1884, exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and reissued in pale green in 1891.

The work should also be considered alongside Lachenal’s broader group of “pots-sculptures,” including vessels and objects with sculptural reliefs of lizards, frogs, birds, flowers, and shells. Recent scholarship treats these zoomorphic and organic reliefs as central to Lachenal’s artistic identity, not as peripheral ornament.

Within the Bestiaire, this tureen relates to other major aquatic works in the Marine Fish, Cephalopods, Echinoderms, and Crustaceans categories. Its marine animals are not merely decorative subjects but structural participants in the object’s form.

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