In the shape of a dolphin, painted with light blue scales and manganese fins, its head highlighted in green and grey, with printed labels to the reverse inscribed 'P. 48 /E. de R./ 78' for Édouard de Rothschild and 'Einsatzstab R nr. 4159'
10¹⁄₂ in. (26.7 cm.) high

Possibly Emile Gavet collection; 31 May-9 June 1897, lot 557 and 559 (part).
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905).
Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949).
Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of France in May 1940 (ERR no. R 4159).
Recovered by the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section from the Altaussee salt mines, Austria, and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 23 June 1945 (MCCP no. 340/6).
Returned to France on 9 January 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Emile Molinier, Collection Emile Gavet: catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1889, n° 598.
Collection de Mr. Le baron Alphonse de Rothschild, circa 1890, (n.d.), vol. II, pl. 56.

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Two cisterns of the same model are in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (museum nos. MR 2343, MR 2344), purchased by the museum in 1825 from the collection of Edmé Antoine Durand (1768-1835), see Louis Courajod, La Collection Durand et ses séries du Moyen âge et de la Renaissance au Musée du Louvre, 1888, p. 39, no. 81 and Gaston Migeon, Catalogue des faïences françaises et des grès allemands, Musée du Louvre, 1901, p. 53, no 116.

Sold with thermoluminescence certificate N123b55 dated 14 February 2023 from Oxford Authentification Ldt, stating that the sample tested was last fired between 300 and 500 years ago (1523-1723).