A RARE AND MASSIVE PUNCHBOWL

CIRCA 1775

Details

A RARE AND MASSIVE PUNCHBOWL
CIRCA 1775
Enamelled with painterly skill around the exterior with two pointedly contrasting scenes, one after William Hogarth's painting Midnight Modern Conversation, showing a group of English gentlemen gathered around a table in St. John's Coffeehouse after a long night of dissipation, some still alert and offering toasts ladled from a large blue and white punchbowl, others dozing or in drunken stupors, one at the right with a lit candle setting his sleeve afire, one with a flask slipping from his hand, spilling its contents, on the floor in the foreground a leaking blue and white chamberpot and the tallcase clock at the other side reading 4 o'clock, while on the other side of the bowl is the scene of an elegant Chinese gentlemen's supper, the dishes arranged carefully on the table before them and a maidservant pouring tea, four of the diners conversing while the fifth dozes in his chair, perhaps from the effects of the pipe falling from his hand, to one side a girlservant brings a tray of fruit and behind her the gentlemens' hats and cloaks are carefully placed on a table, in the room beyond an altar table holds an arrangement of scholar's articles with a painting hung behind and on the other side a garden courtyard is visible, in between these scenes gilt scrollwork suspends floral festoons and encloses loose bouquets with butterflies hovering above, a similar flower cluster in the center of the bowl beneath a border of further floral festoons
21¼ in. (53.5 cm.) diam.

Provenance

A private collection, Portugal
With the Chinese Porcelain Co., New York

Literature

Tharp, Lars, Hogarth's China: Hogarth's Paintings and Eighteenth Century Ceramics, Merrell Holbertson, London 1997
Howard, D.S., Catalogue, 1997, no. 146, p. 119

Exhibited

A Tale of Three Cities - Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, Sotheby's London, January 1997

Lot Essay

The special talent of William Hogarth (1697-1764) for satirizing human folly brought him commercial success in his lifetime and a popularity that endures today. Hogarth painted Midnight Modern Conversation in 1730, and published the print in 1732/33. It has been called his most widely disseminated work (rivalled only by Marriage /ga la Mode); the last copies made from his original plates were printed in 1822. St. John's Coffeehouse was in Shire Lane, Temple Bar, near the Law Courts of London, and Hogarth's intent was clearly to lampoon the behaviour of prominent lawyers and businessmen of his day. Contemporary observers were able to identify several of the figures in the scene, which was accompanied by this inscription:

Think not to find one meant/Resemblance there/We lash the Vices but the Persons/spare -/Prints should be prized as Authors/should be read/Who sharply smile prevailing Folly dead

Midnight Modern Conversation was an immediate success and soon found its way onto English and then Dutch and German ceramics. As Hogarth's later work O The Roast Beef of Old England or The Gate of Calais eventually made its way to China to be copied onto magnificent special order bowls so, too, did Midnight Modern Conversation. Only one other Chinese piece with this subject is known, a punchbowl ordered by a Danish sea captain, decorated on its other side with a Danish East Indiaman. (See J. Huitfeldt, Ostindisk porselen i Norge, Olso, 1993, pp. 42, 72, 73). The story of the present punchbowl's commission remains unknown, as does the origin of its Chinese scene, which seems both to claim superiority to the sybarites opposite and also, in the person of its one intemperant, to subtly underscore their common humanity.

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