A rare gold and enamel snuff box, Guidon, Remond, Gide & Co, Geneva, circa 1792’

‘Prince Potemkin advances to besiege Oczakow. Several engagements between the Russian and Turkish flotillas at the mouth of the Nieper, in which the latter are constantly defeated. Siege of Oczakow commenced; flotilla destroyed, and town bombarded by the prince of Nassau. Unusual length of the siege and obstinacy of the defence. Winter approaches, and little progress yet made. Excessive coldness of the winter reduces the besiegers to great distress. Russian cavalry, incapable any longer of enduring the extremity of the weather, desert their infantry, and abandon the siege. Mutiny apprehended in the camp. Prince Potemkin, as the last resort, orders a general bombardment and cannonade with red-hot balls. Shell falls upon the grand powder magazine, which blows up with so terrible an explosion, as to destroy a great part of the wall. Long and bloody engagement in the streets and houses (…). Great designs of Russia against the Ottoman Empire interrupted by the war with Sweden’ (The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year, edited by Edmund Burke, London, vol. 1788, chapter III, page 56).

This explosion of the powder magazine is exactly the moment represented in the present lot. For a scene from the aforementioned war with Sweden at the same time, see lot 12 in this sale.

The contemporary account describes the events around the second siege of Oczakow in 1788, one of the major battles between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian army as part of the Russo-Turkish War between 1787 and 1792, in which the Ottoman Empire attempted to regain lands lost to the Russian Empire during the previous Russo-Turkish War between 1768 and 1774. The fortress of Oczakow, a small city which is today located in southern Ukraine, had served as a capital of the Ottoman province for a long time and was an important strategic point for obtaining control of the Black Sea littoral. In July 1737, the fortress had already once been taken by Russian troops, but it was then abandoned by the Russians and restored to Turkey in 1739.

The second siege of Ochakov was initiated in summer 1788 and was fought by both naval units and land forces, commanded by the charismatic Prince Grigory Potemkin (1739-1791), Catherine the Great’s favourite, and General Alexander Suvorov. After half a year of fierce battles, the city was ultimately besieged at great cost for the Ottoman army and the Grand Admiral Hasan Pasha was taken prisoner, along with many of his soldiers. Potemkin, however, managed to keep his soldiers out of direct battle by encircling and bombarding the city to cut off the opponents’ supplies, resulting in much fewer casualties on the Russian side. In 1792, the Treaty of Jassy transferred the formerly called Özi to the Russian Empire and it was renamed as Ochakov.

The box is part of a small group of gold and enamel boxes made by the Geneva firm of Guidon, Rémond, Gide & Co. representing events during the siege. The pair to this box (fig. 1) was formerly in the collection of Count Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich-Yerevansky, Serene Prince of Warsaw (1782-1856) and now belongs to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (Collections of the Treasure Gallery, inventory number Э-10942). The enamelled scene on the lid seems to be almost a mirror image of the present box, however the somewhat empty space in the centre of the foreground has been taken by a white horse and the dismounted equestrian in the present lot. A third box by the same makers (sold Bonham’s London, 12 November 2014, lot 2) shows another aspect of the siege, namely the preparation for the occupation, as part of which the Russian army encircled the city, as the inscription on the base indicates: Tranchée des Russes devant Oczakow.

On 1 January 1792, Jean George Rémond, born in Geneva in 1752 and soon the most prolific bijoutier in the city, and his long-term business partners Laurent Guisseling and Jean Noé Lamy, both engravers from Hanau, went into partnership with Joseph Guidon and David Gide. This company for ‘la fabrication et la commerce de bijouterie’, was registered on 21 April 1796 under the name of Guidon, Remond, Gide & Co (Julia Clarke, ‘Swiss Snuff Boxes 1785-1835’, in: Haydn Williams, Enamels of the World, The Khalili Collections, London, 2009, p. 295). The very successful and fruitful partnership came to an end in 1801, when a new company known as Rémond, Lamy & Co. was found (Julia Clarke, op. cit.).

Only the best enamel painters of their time painted contemporary events in enamel, usually after prints or paintings. Since the Renaissance, history painting has traditionally been the most prestigious category in the hierarchy of genres. More often, one finds gold boxes representing enamel paintings of other categories: classical mythological subjects by Abraham Lissignol, genre subjects in domestic interiors, as to be found in signed enamel plaques by Berneaud, landscapes or seascapes with fishermen by the Geneva enamel painter Jean-Louis Richter or the equally talented Hanau painter Antoine Carteret, as well as still lives of flowers, animals or fruit (see also lot 52 in this sale), depending on the targeted market and clientele for each box.

Another example for a contemporary event on a Geneva gold box can be found in the Khalili collections: a gold box by Rémond, Lamy & Co (1801-1804), enamelled with Napoleon’s passage of the Pont d’Arcole in 1796 (Haydn Williams, op. cit, no. 211, p. 309).