Pair of Longton Hall Porcelain Figures of Musicians
Circa 1758, unmarked
Modeled dancing, the tambourine player wearing a plumed blue hat, an unusually tailored iron-red lined yellow coat cut away to reveal her puce bodice, the pale-green sleeves with lace Vandyke-style cuffs, ruffled flowered skirt and yellow shoes with matching iron-red bows; her companion, the lyre player, wearing a black plumed hat, a matching cut-away iron-red lined puce coat, yellow waist coat, pale-green sleeves with lace Vandyke-style collar and cuffs, puce breeches and black shoes with yellow bows, the scroll molded tree-stump base edge in puce and pale-green.
Height 11 1/2 inches.

Provenance:
Both with James A. Lewis & Sons, New York (labels).
Senator E.A. Maguire Collection.
Christie's, London, 21 April 1958, lot 47 (male figure only).
Anonymous sale, Christie's, New York 21 April 1982, lot 64.
M. Mellanay Delhom Collection, Charlotte, NC. (1982).

See William Bemrose, Longton Hall Porcelain, pl. XXI; Also see Bernard Watney, Longton Hall Porcelain, pl. 74a and b for an identical pair of figures in the Lord Fisher Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, U.K. For a male musician from the Duckwall Collection, see Catherine B. Lippert, Eighteenth-Century English Porcelain in the Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, pp.259-262, cat. no. 63. A pair was sold from the Collection of Mrs. Charles Dunlap, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, 3-6 December 1975, lot 185.

An unidentified saltglazed stoneware version of this model is known and may be associated with William Littler.

C Estate of Sarah Belk Gambrell

His left finger tips disrepaired, restoration to his left thigh, ankle, top of lyre and hat plume; her right little finger missing, nicks to her hat brim and chip to her hem, minor chips to flowers foliage and ribbons, firing cracks to bases.

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