Dog: C.5-1961

Titles

Dog

Maker(s)

Factory: Vincennes Porcelain Manufactory

Entities

• Animal figure

Categories

• Soft-paste porcelain

Description

Soft-paste porcelain figure of a dog, painted with light reddish-brown and black enamels.

Soft-paste porcelain, press-moulded and hand-modelled, and painted with light reddish-brown and black enamels. Small, long-haired dog with a short snout, large eyes, and a long tail curved over its back. Its hair is coloured light reddish-brown and the eyes and nose are black. It sits on a rectangular, lightly carved base, which is hollow underneath with a supporting horizontal strut about a third of the way along from the hindquarters of the dog

Notes

History note: Purchased from Alfred Spero, London for £50 before October 1948 by Louis C.G. Clarke, Leckhampton, Cambridge.

Legal notes

L.C.G. Clarke Bequest, 1960

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1961-05-27) by Clarke, Louis Colville Gray

Dating

18th Century, Mid
Louis XV
Circa 1751 CE - 1757 CE

Note

The mid-18th century fashion for porcelain figures of dogs emanated from Meissen where J.J. Kaendler had modelled pugs and other breeds during the 1740s. They were probably being made at Vincennes by 1750, as by October, 1752, when a general inventory was taken, 259 dogs were in stock. The solid construction, speckly glaze and firing cracks in the Fitzwilliam's model and the few others known, suggest a date in the early 1750s. No moulds have survived for this model, nor does the factory's register of sales in the 1750s mention any dogs in sufficient detail to enable any of them to be matched with it. At least three other examples are recorded, all white.

School or Style

Rococo