Lot Essay
The attribution of the image to the French artist Alfred-François Guès (b. 1837), an exhibitor at the Paris Salon 1863-1881, and the enameling to Emile Delforge, known to have worked with Théodore Leroy and to have been awarded silver and gold medals at the Paris salon of 1885, is based on comparisons with plaques of similar subject and facture including one also signed E. Pages and featuring the same maiden against a variant ground, also from the Greenfield collection and sold Christie's, New York, 20 October 2009, lot 128. Cf. Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, Faïence et Porcelain de Paris, Dijon, 1995, p. 350.