A Soft-Paste Sèvres Porcelain Cup & Saucer with the Portrait of the Scientist Lamarck, circa 1795
Each piece with the gilded factory mark Sevres R-F adjacent to the gilder’s mark HP for or Henri Prévost(active at Sèvres 1757-97).
The portrait being painted on the Cup’s reserve appears to be of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), a significant French naturalist and scientist who made breakthroughs in the study of evolution.During the 1790s he held a variety of professorships at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.