Louis Victor Gerverot in a new light: his early years and bird painting, 1766-1773.(Biography)

Louis Victor Gerverot, a widely traveled French decorator of ceramics known for his birds of fantasy, worked at several European manufactories in his lifetime. Unfortunately, the published accounts of his life contain many discrepancies and inaccuracies that have never been investigated. This article offers newly discovered and corrected biographical information about Gerverot's early life and explores the bird painting he did at the Furstenberg, Frankenthal, and Hochst manufactories in Germany and at the Weesp manufactory in the Netherlands through 1773.

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One scarcely encounters the name Gerverot in English ceramics literature without accusations of his having been a rogue, a master of industrial espionage, "a secret-monger...one of the most flagrant, skillful and unscrupulous of the eighteenth century." In fact, this perception has not changed since Bevis Hillier published his work on the Turners of Lane End in 1965, and used the above words when addressing the Wedgwood Society in London the following year. (1) In continental literature, by contrast, Gerverot's accomplishments and talents have earned him no small measure of respect. Still, his personal life and relationships have remained mysterious and controversial. But gradually, evidence is emerging that puts Gerverot's life story in a new light and may one day serve to "rehabilitate" him.

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Gerverot left a very scant paper trail in his wanderings around Europe, apart from the letters and factory records that survive from the relatively lengthy period he was at the Furstenberg manufactory between 1795 and 1814. (2) The records of other manufactories where he was employed are lacking or minimal, and some of his biographers have tended to speculate or adjust the evidence to fit their theories. All too easily such speculation has hardened into accepted fact.

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