The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 18, 2025
Snuff Box (Tabatière)
1768–69; 1776–78
Location: Not on view
Did You Know?
These miniature paintings are mounted à cage, a practice popular in the mid-1700s that involved setting decorated panels into gold frames to create a box’s walls.Description
Snuff boxes were highly ornamented functional objects popular among French social elites. They were simultaneously containers for powdered tobacco and a means to communicate social and political status. Often decorated with miniature paintings inspired by popular paintings of the time, the works reproduced on this box are modeled after those of Claude-Joseph Vernet (cover and front panel) and David Teniers the Younger (base, side, and back panels).- Mrs. Edward B. Greene, Cleveland, Ohio.
- {{cite web|title=Snuff Box (Tabatière)|url=false|author=Pierre-Nicholas Pleyard|year=1768–69; 1776–78|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1958.123