Oval-shaped Porcelain Coffee Cup From The Empire Period, From The Sophie Gail Collection, Schoelcher Manufactory

Oval-shaped coffee cup made by Schoelcher in the early 19th century, during the Empire period.

From the Sophie Gail collection

Beautiful antique-style polychrome decoration on a purple and gold background, featuring palm leaves; gilded interior.
Decor featuring the heads of Pan and a lioness on the sides of the cup.

Good condition, with a slight chip in the enamel.

Cup height: 11.3 cm
Cup diameter: 8.5 cm
Saucer diameter: 15.3 cm

Provenance
- Sophie Gail Collection (1775–1819) or Sophie de la Valette Collection
(1776–1852), wife of Gay.
- Detroyat Collection.
- Private French collection.

Sophie Gail was born on August 28, 1775, in Paris. She was the daughter of Claude-François Garre (1730–1799), a surgeon and major at the Royal Military School of the
Grande and Petite Écurie, a member of the College of Surgery, and an academician.
According to her husband, she had received “an education beyond what was customary for her gender.”
Like other young women of her social class, Sophie studied music, piano, and singing. At age 14, she composed and published romances, her
first works. In 1794, at age 19, she married the Hellenist Jean-Baptiste Gail, who was 20 years her senior; they had one son, Jean-François Gail. She
divorced him very soon after, in 1801, and led a free-spirited life; she would go on to have three more sons by different fathers. She earned her living as a pianist and singer, published
romances, and composed arias for the theater in France, London, Vienna, Germany, and Spain.
In 1847, musicologist Adrien de La Fage (1801–1862) described her as “the only female composer to have achieved genuine success in the theater.” He
advocated for the use of the term “composer” in her case, highlighting the status she had achieved and the growing visibility of musical creation by women.