A gold and enamel snuff box, Mathieu Coiny, Paris, 1761 /1762

Enamel painters, goldsmiths, and lapidaries in the eighteenth century were often inspired by a variety of sources, including popular paintings by Vernet, Boucher, Oudry, Watteau, and others, as well as subsequent engravings.

The present box features a finely painted miniature version of a painting by Carle van Loo (1705–1765), whose popularity is further demonstrated by another gold box with the same subject in the Wallace Collection in London (fig. 1, G24).

Made four years prior to the present lot by the eminent Parisian goldsmith Noël Hardivilliers, the lid of the gold box in the Wallace Collection is also decorated with the Allegory of Music. Painted by Carle van Loo in 1752 and exhibited at the Salon of 1753, the painting is part of a series of overdoor paintings representing allegories of the arts (fig. 2, now in the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, acc. no. 1950.12). Formerly located in the Salon de Compagnie - the private rooms of Madame de Pompadour at the Château de Bellevue - the painting depicts Madame de Pompadour at the keyboard, which has been modified for the enamel version represented on both the present box and the example by Hardivilliers.

Mathieu Coiny was the third goldsmith of that name; both his father and grandfather had worked at Versailles. His brother Joseph-Urbain was ‘bijoutier ordinaire du roi et des Menus Plaisirs’, and his brother Jacques-Toussaint was also a goldsmith in Paris. Christened in November 1723, Mathieu became a master goldsmith, sponsored by his father, from the Pont Notre-Dame on 17 September 1755. He remained at the same address for some thirty years, producing gold boxes and bijouterie. He was elected warden of the Goldsmiths’ guild in 1771 and 1772.

Another stylistically similar box by Coiny, made two years before the present lot and also decorated with genre subjects in enamel, can also be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.1191).