Figure: The Teaching of Love

The porcelain factory at Sèvres was established in 1738. Catering to the luxury trade, it flourished under the patronage of Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour. In addition to beautiful tablewares, the factory produced statuettes and figurines. The most famous of the statuettes are those of glittering white biscuit porcelain modeled by Étienne-Maurice Falconet, the leading eighteenth-century French sculptor. Falconet was hired by Madame de Pompadour and served as a chief modeler at Sèvres from 1757 to 1766. While employed there, he produced numerous models for biscuit statuettes depicting popular mythological scenes, as well as charming renderings of playful children.

"The Teaching of Love," as modeled by Falconet in 1763 after a drawing by French artist François Boucher, is a rustic scene of a group of young, eager students being instructed in the tender nature of love. This sentimental subject is based on the theme of an eighteenth-century play. The figures convey fluidity, grace, and movement, characteristics that pay tribute to Falconet’s skill as a sculptor and his reliance on Boucher’s playful Rococo drawings.

In the mid-eighteenth century, porcelain figurines like these began to take the place of the intricate sugar sculptures used to decorate the elaborate banquet tables of European nobles. This figurine was a gift to the Art Museum from the Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, the former Lela Emery, sister of John J. Emery, a former president of the Art Museum’s board of trustees.