Description
'The Old Vice-Roy of Kanton'. A Limehouse porcelain blue and white figure.
He wears a fur trimmed headdress, a bead necklace and sits cross-legged on a moulded rectangular plinth decorated with a chequer design and with a band of scrolls along the front. No marks. Damaged and repaired. c.1746-48, 10.5cm. High.
The subject, 'The Old Vice-Roy of Kanton', is copied from an engraving from Johan Nieuhof's An Embassy from the East India Company, published in Dutch in 1655 and in English in 1669. Two creamware Whieldon models copied from the same print are known, (cf. Christie's 6th June 1988 lot 17), and the subject also appears moulded in relief on a saltglazed stoneware teapot in the Weldon collection, No.301.
Besides a seated cat and a number of small dogs, no Limehouse figure has previously been recorded.
