Figure of Diana, soft-paste porcelain enamelled in colours and gilt, William Duesbury & Co., Derby, ca. 1765

Figure of Diana in soft-paste porcelain painted in enamels and gilded. She looks aloft,her right arm raised to take an arrow from a quiver on her back. In her left hand, which is at her side, she had a porcelain fitting for a bow, now missing. In her hair she wears a crescent, emblematic of the moon. She wears thonged sandals and a sash at her waist. A greyhound stand on all fours at her side. The base, of swirled rococo scrollwork, stands on three feet. Four 'patch marks' on the base.

Bequeathed by G. N. Abram

Larger variants of this figure with the greyhound seated are illustrated in J. Twitchett, Derby Porcelain (1980), p.63, fig. 53 and P. Bradshaw, Derby Porcelain Figures 1750-1848 (1990) p.111, and a third is in the V&A (C.711-1925). Bradshaw remarks that the version of Diana in the act of selecting an arrow from a quiver slung behind her was copied from J.F. Eberlein's Meissen model, which was adapted from a 17th-century French bronze, which in turn derives from an archaic Greek marble of Artemis (op. cit. p. 63).

C.223-1986