Of the many talented French artists Léon Arnoux hired to work for Minton, Émile Lessore’s sketchy personal style stands apart from the more highly rendered work of his contemporaries by it’s very modernity In fact, it was this very style which caused his difficulty with employers when he first began working in ceramics.
He was born Émile-Aubert Lessore in Paris in 1805. He apprenticed painting first under artist Louis Hersent then under Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
In 1826 he exhibited several paintings at the prestigious Paris Salon one of which was awarded a prize of second place, an extraordinary feat for a twenty-one year old artist. This kind of success at the Salon boosted his early career. What followed was a prolific creative period, producing oil and watercolor paintings, doing genre scenes and landscapes in great number for the next few years.
In 1832 he travelled with artist William Wyld to Algeria where they drew and painted scenes of everyday life in the country. This resulted is the 1833 publication of a collaborative collection of several folios, collected by subject, ultimately numbering 50 lithographs depicting life in that country, Voyage pittoresque dans la Régence d’Alger. Some of the images were painted by Wyld and some by Lessore. The lithographs were done by Lessore.
In 1835 he and Wyld published a second group of prints, Album Veniene Compose de Douze Vues Lithographees with 12 plates of Venice. Some editions included hand colored lithographs while others did not.
His first venture in ceramics was in 1850 for the Laurin Factory in Bourg-la-Reine, a company that specialized in decorated faience earthenware art pottery. He expanded into doing decoration for other faience potteries as well such as Creil.
In 1853 he received the opportunity to work at the finest pottery in France, La Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres. With his eccentric personality and loose style of painting he unfortunately did not seem to fit in with the company’s disciplined workforce and rigidly controlled, rendered style. He felt frustrated by his lack of success there, leaving after two years.
Now unemployed, disaster struck with his young wife’s unexpected death. With two small children to support, he sought ceramic decorating employment wherever he could find it eventually turning to the burgeoning art pottery industry of Great Britain.
In 1858, he joined a host of French artisans who were hired by Léon Arnoux to work on Minton’s new maiolica art pottery and majolica wares. Although he produced some exceptional pieces while at Minton, he had difficulty with his employers. He felt stifled by the environment; his work was erratic in quality and he did not work well with Arnoux or the other artists at Minton. He left the company in less than a year.
After leaving Minton, he found an eager employer at the Wedgwood factory which was planning to expand their own product line into fine art pottery and majolica. He began work there in Spring 1860, immediately trying to imitate the maiolica of Renaissance Italy. In 1862 his work at Wedgwood was shown at the 1862 London Exhibition where it received great praise. He soon became one of the highest paid decorators at Wedgwood,
He continued decorating ceramics at the Wedgwood factory in the Etruria Works through most of the 1860s. He did a large range of work for Wedgwood, from exhibition pieces to cabinet plates to tableware. As he did with his other ceramic employers, his images were generally reproductions of work from other sources though he did occasionally do original work as well.
The vast majority of his work at Wedgwood was enamel decorated Queensware—a refined form of creamware—but he also did enamel painted decoration on majolica and pearlware as well. Additionally he did designs for reproduction on transferware for mass production.
His work in the Wedgwood display at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle again achieved acclaim though perhaps not as great as it had five years earlier in England. Lessore longed to return to his home in France but his ceramic work still remained too financially lucrative for him to leave Wedgwood. As a compromise in 1868 he arranged to do piecework for Wedgwood from his home in France at Marlotte. He bought blank fired pieces from Wedgwood which he would decorate at home then sell back to Wedgwood for finishing. His assistant at Wedgwood, Henry Brownsword, acted as a go-between, often traveling to France, assisting in the coloring and copying of the pieces while doing touch ups in England as needed.
After he left England, his star began to dim in the ceramic world but he continued sending work to Wedgwood until 1875 when his health began to fail. He died the following year on January 26, 1876 at the age of 70. A retrospective of his work was shown at John Mortlock Pottery Galleries in April of 1877.
In total he decorated over 2,300 pieces for Wedgwood. His son Jules Lessore went on to become a successful painter himself as did Jules’ daughter Thérèse Lessore who also did work for Wedgwood.
Émile Lessore’s work is easily identifiable as he always signed his pieces, the only exception possibly being the ceramic drawings he did for transferware, though his style alone allows for easy identification.
Lessore’s work in ceramics lasted 25 years, but in spite of it being a profession brought on by economic necessity rather than career choice he is regarded as one of the major artistic decorators of the Victorian era.
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