CIRCA 1752

Details

A Chelsea silver-shaped fable plate
Circa 1752
Painted by Jefferyes Hammett O'Neale with a fox in a stone-built circular well, looking out at a wolf beneath a tree and bushes with blue mountains in the distance and birds in the cloudy sky above, the moulded border with a bouquet, scattered flower-sprays, flowerheads and a caterpillar divided by three moulded thumbpieces edged in brown, shaped brown line rim (small area of restoration to rim at 2 o'clock)
9 in. (23 cm.) diam.

Provenance

Bought from Winifred Williams, London, November 1982.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

The Fable represented here may represent a variation on a the more often-seen Fable of 'The Fox and the Goat in the Well', in which a canny fox, trapped in a well, entices a helpful goat into the well to drink, before jumping on his back in order to escape. Another possibility might be the Fable of 'The Wolf, The Fox, and Three True Things': A wretched fox had fallen into the clutches of a wolf. She begged the wolf to spare her life and not to kill her, old as she was. The wolf said, 'By Pan, I will let you live if you tell me three true things'. The fox said, 'First, I wish that we had never met! Second, I wish you had been blind when we met! Third, and last of all, I hope that you do not live out this year, so that we will never meet again!' (Fable number 109, Aesop's Fables, A New Translation by Laura Gibbs, Oxford 2002).

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