Description:
One of two English face screens or fire screen or fire shield with a tightly-twisted red silk handle with turned brass ends, which protected one's face (which might be made up with paraffin-based cosmetics among the weathy) from the heat of the fire. The round, scalloped-edge screen is decorated with a painted seascape of Tiger Island which situated at the entrance to Bocca Tigris, the channel leading from the Canton River to the port of Canton on China's southeast coast. This scene, "Tiger Island, Entrance of the Canton River" is based on a 1832 engraving by Edward Goodale (1795-1870), one of England's top steel line engravers and one of only two engravers exclusively used by English artist William Turner (1775-1851), after a picture by William Clarkford Stanfield (1793-1867), a marine and landscape artist and member of the Royal Academy. Goodale's engraving of Tiger Island was first published in "Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book" in 1832, and later in the three-volumn "The Gallery of Engravings" by George Newenham Wright (1790?-1877) and Charles Henry Timperley (ed.), published in London by Fisher, Son & Co., 1845-6. Interestingly this scene is similar to Plate 21, "Termination of the Great Wall of China, Gulf of Pecheli", one of 124 engraved plates in "China, in a series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of that Ancient Empire. Drawn, from original and authentic sketches, by Thomas Allom. With historical and descriptive notices by the Rev. G. N. Wright" by George Newenham Wright, also published in London by Fisher, Son, & Co., 1843. Plate 21 was drawn by Thomas Allom (1804-1872) and engraved by James Baylis Allen (1803-1876). The view on the screen depicts a Chinese sloop-rigged vessel and three small boats with Chinese men who may be transfering goods in the foreground, and another sailing vessel ship and Tiger Island in the background.
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