Time Clipping the Wings of Love: C.38-1932

Titles

Time Clipping the Wings of Love

Maker(s)

Factory: Derby Porcelain Factory
Factory: William Duesbury & Co.
Painter: Dyck, Anthony van (Derived from)
Printmaker: McArdell, James (After)

Entities

• Figure group

Categories

• Soft-paste porcelain

Description

Soft-paste porcelain figure of Time Clipping the Wings of Love, slip-cast, lead-glazed, and painted in blue (a little), turquoise-green, green (a little), flesh pink, pink, puce, purple, brown, and black enamels, and gilt

Soft-paste porcelain Time Clipping the Wings of Love, slip-cast, lead-glazed, and painted in blue (a little), turquoise-green, green (a little), flesh pink, pink, puce, purple, brown, and black enamels, and gilt. The unglazed underside has one obvious patch mark and a central circular ventilation hole. The group is on a high, heavily scrolled base picked out in turquoise-green and gold. Winged and bearded Time is seated on a tree trunk with his right leg forward, the foot resting on a sheaf of arrows. He holds Cupid over his left knee with his left hand and is about to clip Cupid's wing with a pair of small shears held in his right hand. Time wears a purple robe decorated with large and small circular motifs, which is held up by red cross bands. Cupid has a yellow drape. On the base to the viewer's right there is a crown, a sceptre, and an hourglass, and on the left, a globe.

Notes

History note: Unknown before donor, Mrs W.D. Dickson, Bournemouth

Legal notes

Given by Mrs W.D. Dickson

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (1932-06-13) by Dickson, W. D. (Frances Louisa), Mrs

Dating

18th Century, second half
George III
Circa 1765 CE - 1780 CE

Note

The figure (also known as Time clipping the Wings of Cupid) was derived from the painting of Time Clipping the Wings of Love by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), now in the Musée Jacquemart André, Paris, inv. no. 419, probably after an undated mezzotint of this by the Irish artist, James MacArdell (c. 1729-65), working in London. The print of this subject by Charles Phillips, is dated 1772, and is therefore too late to have been used for the earliest versions of the model. A coloured etching of this subject made c. 1633-4, by François Perrier (1594-1649) bears an inscription derived from Virgil, 'Omnia vincit Amor, vincit mox tempus Amorem'. The theme, however, may have been inspired by a more recent work, Otto van Veen's Amorum Emblemata (1608), which included the verse: 'Loues harrte is euer young T'is onlie tyme that can the winges of Cupid clip, And make him fly more low than he was wont to doo, But Tyme clips not away his good will thereunto, The aged carter loves to heare the lashing whip.'

School or Style

Rococo