Seated Gentleman with Dog: C.3069-1928

Titles

Seated Gentleman with Dog

Maker(s)

Unidentified English Porcelain Factory

Entities

• Figure

Categories

• Porcelain
• Soft-paste porcelain

Description

Soft-paste porcelain figure of a seated man caressing a dog, painted in enamels

Soft-paste porcelain, slip-cast, with thick lead-glaze which has pooled here and there on the base, and has many minute black speckles, painted in yellowish-green, yellow, rose-pink, puce, orange-red, purple, and brown enamels. The underside is unglazed and rough, and has a large circular ventilation hole through which the interior fo the figure is visible. The roughly square base is edged by frilled scrolls flanking a pierced shell asymmetrically placed at the front. At the back it rises up into a tree stump which is pierced by a circular hole to take an attachment, probably a candle branch. Applied to the top of the base there is a group of three flowers and three leaves, and a group of two flowers and two leaves. The young man is seated on the stump with his right leg extended to the side and his left foot forward. He turns his head to his left, and with his left hand caresses the head of a dog which has its front paws on his left thigh. He holds his other hand over his right thigh. He has brown hair and eyes, pale pink cheeks, and a pale red mouth. His hair is tied back with a purple bow with long tails. He wears a shirt with a ruffled neck and sleeves, a yellow waistcoat with purple buttons, a white jacked decorated with floral bouquets and sprigs, a yellow collar, and purple buttons, and matching breeches with red bands and a yellow flower on each knee. He has white stockings, and yellow shoes with a puce and white flower on each. The dog is white with brown patches. The scrolls and shell round the base are picked out in puce.

Notes

History note: Sotheby's, 1 May 1925,Chinese blue and white porcelain; European pottery and porcelain, lot 85. Purchased by Hunt for £6 for Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, FRS, Trinity College, Cambridge

Legal notes

Dr J. W. L. Glaisher Bequest

Place(s) associated

• Derby ⪼ Derbyshire ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928-12-07) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

18th Century, Mid
George II
Circa 1755 CE - 1760 CE

Note

This figure belongs to a very small group which was attributed to Derby by Arthur Lane (1961), and described by him as 'Transitional Derby', but have very different characteristics from either the early Derby dry-edge figures, or later models. The other figures include, a girl on a horse, a seated man similar to this one, but wearing a hat and holding a bird, a seated girl companion with a lamb, a dancer, an exotic pheasant, a candlestick with rabbits, and a candlestick with a dog chasing a cat up a tree. Dr Dennis Rice (1983, dubbed them 'Girl-on-a-Horse' group, after the figure in his own collection. Their unidentified maker has also been described as the 'Compass Factory'. Dr Rice described their characteristics as ‘light in weight’ with a paste which is ‘rather opaque, a glaze that is somewhat dirty and speckled, and a rough unglazed dirty surface under a base which is scrolled and rococo in form’ Some are marked on the base with an incised circle containing a triangle and a stroke with a shorter stroke resembling a y. The pale colouring is distinctive, and different from early Derby figures. Bradshaw (1990) described the modelling as crude, but that seems unduly critical. This figure is naïve by the standards of sculpture, but is daintily modelled with a small head and limbs.

School or Style

Rococo