QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1745

Details

A CHINESE EXPORT PORCELAIN ‘SCOTSMEN’ PLATE
QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1745
Enameled with two kilted figures, one with shotgun and the other playing his bagpipes, the border with four grisaille and gilt landscape vignette panels
9 in. (22.7 cm.) diameter

Provenance

With Antiquaire Giroux, Brussels, 26 November 1949.
Collection de M. et Mme de Strycker.
Anonymous sale; Piasa, Paris, 13 June 2014, lot 81.
With Cohen & Cohen, London.
Acquired by Irene Roosevelt Aitken from the above at the Winter Antique Show, New York, January 2017..

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

These figures of kilted Scots are after engravings by George Bickham, the piper from his 1743 frontispiece to A Short History of the Highland Regiment. D.S. Howard writes in A Tale of Three Cities, Sotheby's, London, 1997, p. 112, "The engravings had become popular...for they were identified with martyrs of the day - on 18th July 1743, four riflemen of the Regiment were shot in the Tower for mutiny". A combination of Jacobite feeling and fascination with the elaborate costume of the Highlanders seems to have fueled the fashion for these subjects. A similar plate was sold from the Collection of Benjamin F. Edwards III, Christie's, New York, 26 January 2010, lot 37.

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