Tobacco Jar - Lot 43

Tobacco Jar 19th-century polychrome terracotta with a patina from use A pair of two determined-looking figures, hands on hips and feet apart. Single-colored, listed in the Horowitz catalog under number 348 and labeled as an English piece. It is very often depicted in the world of tobacco culture, either in ceramic as here or in polychrome sheet metal, such as the one in the Seita collection (lot 369 of the Piasa auction on September 18, 2009). As for the woman, she has the appearance of a feisty, gray-haired canteen worker with a cigar in the corner of her mouth. Since both figures are engraved with the name “Coinchon”* on the underside of the lid, we can confirm that this is a French piece. This helps explain the grotesque nature of this French depiction of a couple belonging to the hated British navy. These two figures, cast from the same mold, are part of a series yet to be discovered, though a 17th-century lansquenet—wearing a cuirass and boots and smoking a very large pipe—was in fact recently sold for 3,500 euros (including tax) by an auctioneer in Marseille. * This may refer to either Jacques Antoine Théodore Coinchon, a sculptor born in Moulins in 1814, who died in Paris in 1881, lived in Italy, and was a student of David d’Angers; or his own son and student, Albert, who died in 1871, ten years before his father. Marks on the polychrome. H 31 cm