c. 1876

“Soleil Couchant” Plate from the “Service Parisien”

In the Parisien service to which this plate belongs, Félix Bracquemond for the first time created original compositions in the Japanese style rather than simply appropriating individual Japanese motifs. For three earlier services for Haviland and Company, Bracquemond produced etchings with multiple images to be cut apart and applied, typically placing three images on each plate. For the Parisien service, the artist instead decorated each plate with a single, different etching in one allover composition. Notably, this service used the new process of chromolithography to ensure uniformity in the color printing, which hand coloring on the previous three Japanizing services did not guarantee.

The Parisien service was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and described in Jennie Young’s The Ceramic Art (1878) as "a set of plates painted with different scenes, such as a snow-storm, morning, night, before a shower, during a shower. . . . The effect of every view is perfect."