A Sèvres biscuit porcelain medallion portrait of Baron Dubois (Surgeon)

A SÈVRES BISCUIT PORTRAIT MEDALLION
PROFILE OF BARON DUBOIS, SURGEON (1756–1837)
White and pale blue biscuit porcelain, in imitation of Wedgwood’s jasperware.
Royal Manufactory of Sèvres, by 1815
Bearing the incised signature “Brachard aîné” beneath the shoulder, for Charles Nicolas Brachard aîné, sculptor and modeller at Sèvres
Set in its blackened wood frame imitating ebony, with domed glass and a gilt-bronze bezel.

The sitter, Baron Antoine Dubois, surgeon to the Empress Marie Louise, achieved renown as accoucheur at the birth of the King of Rome in 1811. He subsequently held the chair of clinical medicine at the Paris Faculty (1820) and rose to its deanship in 1831.

This medallion belongs to the refined tradition of Sèvres portrait profiles in biscuit, a genre inaugurated under the Restoration with royal likenesses and extended to figures of national eminence. The adoption of Wedgwood’s chromatic language signals both homage and rivalry, positioning Sèvres within the wider European neoclassical taste.
Comparable medallions by Brachard include profiles of sovereigns and princes preserved in the Musée national de Céramique, Sèvres, and the Musée du Louvre. Portraits of contemporary notables, such as Dubois, remain markedly rarer, reflecting the selective extension of the medium beyond dynastic imagery.