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A pair of Chelsea figures of masqueraders

CIRCA 1760, GOLD ANCHOR MARKS

Details
A pair of Chelsea figures of masqueraders
Circa 1760, gold anchor marks
Modelled as a lady and gentleman in fanciful Turkish dress, she with a green snood with a red feather, a black mask, yellow ermine-trimmed coat, iron-red patterned dress and pink skirt, wearing jewellery on her forehead and at her neck and a ribbon across her chest suspending a gilded crescent, he with a puce feathered turban, realistic moustachioed mask, yellow fur-lined cloak, pink flowered jacket with gilt frogging, green trousers and red boots, a braided strap across his chest suspending a gilded crescent, a sword at his side, both standing before flowering tree-stumps on flower-encrusted scroll-moulded bases (she with left arm and hand restored, he with restoration to fingers of right hand, sword hilt and branches, both with other minor chipping)
13½ in. (34.5 cm.) high max. (2)
Provenance
Frank Hurlbutt Collection, sale Sotheby's, 11 April 1946, lot 104.
Literature
Frank Hurlbutt, Chelsea China (1937), pl. 8.
F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain, The Gold Anchor Wares (1952), pl. 56, fig. 108.
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Cf. Bernard Rackham, Schreiber Collection Catalogue (1928), Vol. I, pl. 19, no. 201; Arthur Hayden, Old English Porcelain, The Lady Ludlow Collection (1932), pl. 103, no. 210 and pl. 104, no. 211, for a similar model of the lady with a different male pendant; see also Frank Stoner, Chelsea, Bow and Derby Porcelain Figures (1955), plate 36; and Peter Bradshaw, English Porcelain Figures (1981), pp. 117 & 294. Bernard Rackham, The Connoisseur, July 1925, p. 135, no. 3 has the two figures listed as 'Vauxhall Revellers' and refers to the mismatched examples in the Lady Ludlow Collection cited above.

The present figures exemplify a continuing taste among fashionable English society for exotic Turkish costume that the Chelsea porcelain factory had first sought to meet in the early 1750s with models by Joseph Willems; see Arthur Lane, 'Chelsea Porcelain Figures and the Modeller Joseph Willems', The Connoisseur, June 1960, p. 245, which demonstrates the derivation of Willems's models of ladies in Turkish dress from engravings made by Simon-François Ravenet, after Boucher. Horace Walpole, writing in the World (February 8th, 1753) noted how the new craze for anything Oriental and exotic had infiltrated fashionable dining: 'Jellies, biscuits, sugar plumbs, and creams have long since given way to harlequins, gondoliers, Turks, Chinese and shepherdesses of Saxon China' (the Chelsea factory competed closely against this 'Saxon China', i.e. Meissen porcelain, often imitating or emulating it's wares).

While the design source for the present models has yet to come to light, the figures are obviously intended to represent fashionable Londoners of the time wearing fanciful Turkish costume, not authentic Turks, and therefore the models are never referred to as Turks in the literature. For example, the Chelsea Sale catalogue of 1770 lists 'Two Masquerade Figures', a description which may perhaps refer to these particular models. Arthur Hayden (op. cit.) refers to 'a pair of figures of "The Vauxhall Singers"'. McKenna describes them as 'A pair of larger and more elaborate masqueraders, or possibly Vauxhall singers, decorated with the utmost magnificence in what was considered to be the Turkish taste', while Peter Bradshaw refers to them as 'Vauxhall Revellers'. The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, then known as New Spring Gardens, were in their ascendance in the mid 18th Century.

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