A CHELSEA FABLE SUBJECT OCTAGONAL TEABOWL AND SAUCER, CIRCA 1753-54
painted by Jeffreyes Hamett O'Neale with scenes from Aesop's Fables, the saucer painted with `The Fox and the Goat', the teabowl with `The Crow and the Pot', the saucer also painted with floral sprigs and insects
saucer 12.25cm wide, minor wear and glaze nicks to rims
(2)

Provenance: Sotheby's, London, 13th April 1973, lot 110

The saucer's fable is illustrated by Barlow, Aesop's Fables with His Life, 1666, fable LX, p.121:
The Fox & Goate their scorching thirst t'Aswage
Lodged in one Buckett in a well ingage,
The Fox by prayers does with the Goate prevaile,
That he ascending on his back might scale
The Margent of the well; so he againe
His freedome by this engine did obteyne;
The Goate (the Fox infranchis'd) then desir'd
His freedome might bee by his ayd accquir'd
The Fox the Goate (who by his imposture chydes)
In Angry murmurs with contempt derides
Saying If's witt and beard had but one size
He had declin'd this ruinous surprise
Moral:
Consult before you undertake, or looke,
To be in perillous attempts forsooke

A teabowl with the same fable is illustrated by Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and Other English Porcelain, pl.16, fig.26, and also by Dr Bellamy Gardner 'Animals in Porcelain', E.C.C. Transactions, No.2, 1934, pl.VIII

The teabowl's fable is also shown by Barlow, op. cit., fable XXXIV, p.79:
A Crow each verdant meadow did survey
Her thirsty heate with water to allay,
But none could trace, but that whose treasurie
The bottom of a vessall was; which shee
Attempts in vaine t'attacque when straight ye Gill
She with a stock of pebles strove to fill
Which bouy'd the water up, by wch she gaind
That from wch else her wish had bin restreyn'd
Moral:
Thus ofttymes wee when force cannot prevaile
The Lions skin piece with the Foxes tayle

The same fable is to be seen on a Worcester plate illustrated by Marshall, Coloured Worcester Porcelain, pl.13, No.19.