A CHELSEA FIGURE OF AN 'ITALIAN BEGGAR'
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 2… Read more
A CHELSEA FIGURE OF AN 'ITALIAN BEGGAR'

CIRCA 1755

Details
A CHELSEA FIGURE OF AN 'ITALIAN BEGGAR'
CIRCA 1755
Modelled by Joseph Willems, the bearded man standing with his hand extended, holding an open cloth purse, wearing a black tricorn hat and shoes, a white cloak and tattered yellow trousers, on a square base with canted corners (base restored)
8 in. (20.4 cm.) high
Special notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

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Matilda Burn
Matilda Burn

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Lot Essay

See the footnote to lot 82 (the companion 'Italian Beggar' for the present lot) for further discussion of the modelling characteristics associated with Joseph Willems.

For an illustration of a similar version of this model (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) see Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and other English Porcelain, Pottery and Enamel in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, London, 1957, pl. 20, fig. 44, where the author mentions that in the Chelsea Sale Catalogue of 20th March, 1755, lot 25 is listed as 'Three Figures of an Italian doctor, a Chinese Mask, and a beggar'. See also Peter Bradshaw, 18th Century English Porcelain Figures 1745-1795, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 101, pl. 29 for an illustration of the 'Italian Beggar' (right), and the 'Blind Beggar' (left), also modelled by Willems and stylistically very similar.

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