This porcelain tea service was made in Vienna ca. 1880, following the closure of the Imperial Vienna Porcelain factory in 1864. Known as a tête-á-tête, it was designed for two people and comprises a rectangular tray, a sugar bowl, two cups and saucers and two pots. The pots may have been intended for tea and milk or tea and coffee. The design and decorative scheme aim to emulate earlier tea sets produced by the Imperial Porcelain factory. A comparable Imperial Vienna Porcelain tea set (1801–1802) is also in the Chitra Collection (see CCN. 523).
Although the gilding is less refined than the earlier example, each piece is adorned with delicately hand-painted cartouches depicting mythological and biblical scenes based on prints after oil paintings. The tray features a scene portraying the Jewish heroine Esther fainting in fear before her husband, King Ahasuerus of Persia, based on a 1737 oil painting and tapestry design by Jean-François de Troy, now in the Louvre. The teacups, both pots, and the sugar bowl display paintings after designs by Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807).
One teacup depicts two seated women, inspired by Kauffman’s ‘The Artist in the Character of Design Listening to the Inspiration of Poetry’ (1782). In the painting (now in Kenwood House) Kauffman portrays herself in the role of ‘Design’, an elegant woman holding a drawing board and a porte-crayon, while her companion, representing Poetry, places one hand on Kauffman’s shoulder and holds a lyre. She whispers into the ear of Design, guiding Kauffman’s drawing, sparking an idea. The craftsman of the teacup altered the original colour palette, likely having seen only a printed version of the design. The second teacup also explores the theme of artistic innovation and inspiration. The composition imitates one of Kauffman’s lost paintings: ‘The Birth of William Shakespeare’. The infant Shakespeare is shown being supported by a female mythological figure, possibly symbolising fame or invention. The Viennese craftsman most likely worked from a print by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815). The smaller pot depicts another lost Kauffman painting, showing the Roman poet Horace as a sleeping child, encircled by white doves, symbolising his future greatness.
The images on the sugar bowl and the larger pot derive from Kauffman’s designs to illustrate a piece of contemporary poetry by Italian librettist Pietro Metastasio ‘Le Grazie Vendicate’ – a libretto about conflicts between the three ‘Graces’, Cupid and Venus. The sugar bowl is based on Kauffman’s painting ‘Cupid Finding Aglaia Asleep, Binds Her to a Laurel’, while the larger pot reproduces ‘Cupid Disarmed by Euphrosine’. Both paintings appear to be lost, but several prints after them survive.
