QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1741

This plate illustrates an episode from Chapter XXI in Part I of Cervantes' novel, in which the fanciful protagonist charges at a barber, believing that the shaving-basin he has placed on his head as a makeshift rain-hat is the mythical 'helmet of Mambrino'. The figures at the left side represent a pair of women who laugh as the fancy-struck Don Quixote places the brass bowl atop his own head. The composition originates with a cartoon painted by Charles-Antoine Coypel, circa 1714, as a design for a series of tapestries based on the novel, which were produced by the Gobelins factory in Paris in the 1720s.

Coypel's designs then formed the basis for engraved illustrations by Bernard Picart, circa 1733 and Jacob Folkema, circa 1741, the latter of which is believed to have served as the print source for the present plate. The same composition appears on a later and better-known, but less detailed, series of Chinese export porcelain wares, circa 1750, including the following lot in the present sale.

For discussion of the present plate, see D.S. Howard, exhibition catalogue, A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, London, Sotheby's, 1997, pp. 110-111, no. 132. For a discussion of a further example, see T.V. Litzenburg and A.T. Bailey, Chinese Export Porcelain in the Reeves Center Collection at Washington and Lee University, London, 2003, p. 181, no. 177. For an illustrated comparison between two larger plates of the 1740 and 1750 types, see F. & N. Hervouët and Y. Bruneau, La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes a Décor Occidental, Paris, 1986, pp. 194-195, nos. 9.2-9.3. Three large plates of the type were sold by Christie's, New York, 14 October 1999, lots 51-52. A soup-plate from the collection of J. Jefferson and Anne Weiler Miller was sold by Christie's, New York, 21 January 2016, lot 63.