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The Music Lesson
Willems, Joseph, born 1710 - died 1766 - Enlarge image
The Music Lesson
- Object:
Group
- Place of origin:
London, England (made)
- Date:
ca. 1765 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Willems, Joseph, born 1710 - died 1766 (modeller)
Chelsea Porcelain factory (manufacturer) - Materials and Techniques:
Porcelain painted with enamels and gilded
- Credit Line:
Given by Lady Charlotte Schreiber
- Museum number:
414:192-1885
- Gallery location:
World Ceramics, room 145, case 50
The porcelain figures made in eighteenth-century England are very different in character from those of continental Europe. In part this arises from differences in materials, as the sharpness of detail, glittering glaze and brilliant enamels achieved at Meissen and Nymphenburg, for example, could not be realized in the English 'soft-paste' bodies (and only Derby among the English factories made biscuit porcelain in the manner of Sèvres). Moreover, unlike continental factories, those in England were purely commercial concerns and few were able to recruit modellers of the first rank. Nevertheless, with their softer forms and muted colours, and very different market and aesthetic ambitions, English porcelain figures have a definite charm and character all of their own.
Chelsea figures are of exceptional quality. They were created by one of the few great modellers working in the English industry, Joseph Willems - who, like many of the key personnel at the factory, was from the Low Countries. Willems's figures included compositions of his own creation, accomplished copies of Meissen models and groups based on prints - as with this subject, taken from an engraving of a François Boucher painting. The group prominently features a distinctive characteristic of English ceramic figures of about 1760-1835: the profusion of hand-modelled and applied flowers and vegetation known as 'bocage' (from the French for 'grove'). Such work was carried out by 'repairers', the skilled craftsmen responsible for assembling separately moulded figure parts and sharpening up their detail, and was later a feature of inexpensive Staffordshire pottery ornaments.
