Lot Essay
Compare the very similar figure of a "Nubian slave girl" holding a cornucopia and standing on a leaf-shaped plinth in the collection of S.E. Kennedy, Esq. illustrated by Gorer and Blacker, Chinese Porcelain and Hardstones, vol. I, London, 1911, pl. 74 and later sold at Christie, Manson & Woods, June 21, 1916, Catalogue of the Well-known Collection of Chinese Porcelain formed by Sidney Ernest Kennedy, Esq., repr. in the color frontispiece, no. 80. It was again illustrated by G. Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, London, vol. II, p. 328. A clock flanked by a pair of similar figures was included in the exhibition, Chinesischer Kunst, Berlin, 1929 , Catalogue no. 1012
The inspiration for these figures would most likely have been the dark-skinned foreigners, called "black" by the Chinese, whether African, Indian or Persian, who were known to have been in China as early as the Tang dynasty as slaves or human tribute. By the seventeenth century Africans were rarely seen in the Qing capital at Beijing, although a large community could be found in Macao where they worked as stevedores on Portuguese carracks and as servants in Jesuit missions, charity hospitals and private households
The inspiration for these figures would most likely have been the dark-skinned foreigners, called "black" by the Chinese, whether African, Indian or Persian, who were known to have been in China as early as the Tang dynasty as slaves or human tribute. By the seventeenth century Africans were rarely seen in the Qing capital at Beijing, although a large community could be found in Macao where they worked as stevedores on Portuguese carracks and as servants in Jesuit missions, charity hospitals and private households