Two brothers named Dubois, formerly of St. Cloud, offered to sell their secret to the Intendant of Finance, and were given the necessary means to carry on the production at Vincennes. These men did not fulfil their promise, and were succeeded by one of their workmen, named Gravant. The celebrated Madame de Pompadour used her influence with the king to induce him to favor an enterprise the success of which would make France independent of Saxony. The result was that the manufacture quickly rose to eminence. Chemists, artists, and goldsmiths were engaged in designing and decorating. Flowers were modelled and painted in a style so closely resembling the natural that the king is said, upon one occasion, to have mistaken the artificial for the real. In 1753, the position of manager was given to Eloi Brichard. Louis XV. took a third of the capital upon himself, and the name of “The Royal Porcelain Manufactory of France” was conferred upon the establishment. The workshops at Vincennes became too small, and in 1756 a removal was made to a new building erected specially for the purpose at Sèvres. [Illustration: Fig. 261.--Old Sèvres Pate Tendre. (August Belmont Coll.)] [Illustration: Fig. 262.--Old Jewelled Sèvres Pate Tendre. Cup diameter, 2½ in.; Saucer circumference, 18 in. (Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn Coll.)] [Illustration: Fig. 263.--Jewelled Sèvres. (H. C. Gibson Coll.)] The imitations which had annoyed Adam, the director who preceded Brichard, continued under the administration of the latter. The king then took the entire establishment into his own hands, and appointed M. Boileau director. Such was an eighteenth century toy of royalty. The king, accompanied by the Pompadour, paid regular visits to Sèvres, which was well worthy of being a royal possession. Everything that art could suggest in the form of gardens and groves had been done to embellish it. Even a private chase was provided for the artists, where, in hunting the boar and stag, they relieved the labors of the studio. Never, possibly, were artists so favored by patronage and place, and the productions of Sèvres were worthy of the sunshine in which it basked. Its flowers and vases admit of no classification. Figures were also made in biscuit (see Fig. 226). Chemists vied with each other in the invention of colors, and the _bleu de roi_, Hellot’s turquoise blue (1752), the Pompadour pink (1757), violet, greens, yellow, and iron-red followed each other in rapid succession, and were employed with dazzling effect. Special mention need only be made of the jewelled porcelain (Figs. 262 and 263) on a _bleu de roi_ ground. The successive directors after Boileau were: Parent, 1773-1779; Regnier, 1779-1793; Commissioners, with Chanou and afterward Salmon, Ettlinger, and Meyer, jointly as inspectors, down to 1800; Brongniart, 1800-1847; and then MM. Ebelman, Regnault, and Robert in succession. The specimen here given (Fig. 264) is one of a pair