Will Watch: C.878-1984

Titles

Will Watch

Maker(s)

Production: Unidentified factory

Entities

• Figure
• Victorian Staffordshire figure
• Flat-backed figure

Categories

• Lead-glazed earthenware

Description

White earthenware figure moulded in three parts, with separately moulded right hand, and lead glazed. Painted with black, brown, grey, blue, green, yellow, red, dark pink and flesh-pink enamels, and gilt.

A man stands holding a shotgun in his left hand and a pistol in his right, a package under his right arm. He leans towards his left and is supported by a pile of three barrels. The lower part of the figure is well coloured; above, it is mainly white with gilt and enamel decoration. He wears: a white jacket and shirt, edged in gilt and open at the neck; yellow breeches, decorated with a fine pattern of green spots surrounded by tiny red spots; dark pink stockings, finely painted in light and dark pink; black boots with red-brown tops; a red-brown and green checked sash; and a wide-brimmed hat with feathers, two pink and one blue. The barrels are grey, with bands of blue and gilt. The base is rectangular, extended to the back right, with ‘WILL WATCH’ in raised gilt capitals above a gilt line to the front. The underside is concave and glazed. The back is moulded but undecorated, with a triangular vent hole 10 cm from the bottom.

Notes

History note: From the collection of the late Colonel R.G. Turner.

Legal notes

Given by Mrs J E Cameron 1984, from the collection of the late Col R G Turner

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (1984) by Cameron, J.E., Mrs

Dating

19th Century, Mid#
Victorian
Circa 1850 CE - Circa 1865 CE

Note

The flattened but moulded back, combined with the use of underglaze blue on similar models, suggests this figure was made mid-period, perhaps.1850-1865. The painting of the stockings is unusual, and similar to that found on figures which may have been made by John and Rebecca Lloyd, but Lloyd figures were usually modelled and decorated in the round and the Lloyd factory closed around 1852. A larger factory making figures from the 1850s onwards was Sampson Smith; but although this is a large figure and a simple three-part moulding, like many Sampson Smith-attributed figures, the base and complex outline are untypical. So it is likely that this figure was made by another, perhaps smaller, manufacturer.

‘Will Watch’, a legendary Sussex smuggler, was the hero of several Victorian broadside ballads. Will died at sea in a fight with other smugglers and, as an 1820s ballad records, was buried in an unmarked grave: ‘Where Will Watch, the bold smuggler/ that famed lawless fellow/ Once feared - now forget - / sleeps in peace with the dead’. The figure is perhaps a theatrical portrait: a performance of ‘Will Watch’ , by J H Amherst, took place at the Royalty Theatre, London, on 3 January 1925, and was no doubt repeated in later years.

School or Style

Victorian