CIRCA 1750, PROBABLY SCEAUX, THE LATER SILVER-GILT BASE WITH A MINERVA HEAD MARK OF POST-1838

Details

A FRENCH SILVER-GILT MOUNTED SOFT-PASTE PORCELAIN FIGURE OF A CHINAMAN
Circa 1750, probably Sceaux, the later silver-gilt base with a Minerva head mark of post-1838
Modelled seated, wearing a blue skull cap, brown shoes and a white robe painted with sprigs of puce, iron-red, yellow and green flowers, and with puce-lined sleeves and a puce-edged collar, holding a rose apple in his left hand, his brown eyes wide open and his iron-red tongue protruding from his mouth, and seated on a yellow, brown and green streaked cairn, mounted on a Louis XV silver-gilt pierced scrollwork base (an extended firing crack through the center of his robe from hem to waist and along his left side, both partially disguised with decoration, repair at left wrist)
7½in. (19.2cm.) high

Provenance

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 27 November 1956, lot 38.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

A similar dwarf is in the Fitzhenry Collection, cat. no.76. A third is with the New York trade. This group of figures with distinctive facial features was previously ascribed to Mennecy. In French Porcelain, p. 22, W.B. Honey states that these figures are of undetermined date, but places them as early Mennecy examples, and before 1750.

Current scholarship points to the factory at Sceaux as their source. This faience manufactury did produce soft-paste porcelain figures in limited quantities. The flower painting on the present chinaman's robes is virtually identical with that found on mid-18th century Sceaux faience.

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