Description:
English delft punch bowl decorated with a 'ju-i' scroll band around a half-length portrait of Queen Anne (1665-1714) with strings of pearls in her hair, wearing the Order and Star of the Garter and ermine robes off her shoulders, framed with the initials "A R" with blue in the well; and a common Bristol palette of red, blue, green, and yellow on the exterior. Anne was the second daughter of James, Duke of York (1633-1701), who was crowned James II in 1685 until 1688 when he was forced to flee because of his Catholic sympathies and Parliament's fear that Roman Catholism would return as the official faith of England. In 1789, James's eldest daughter, Queen Mary II (1662-1694), who supported Protestantism rather than her Catholic father in the 1688 Revolution, was invited to assume the throne with her husband, William III (1650-1702), who continued to reign after her death, but they had no surviving heirs. Anne married Prince George of Denmark (1653-1708) in 1683; she had 17 pregnancies but none of her children survived childhood. The last of the Stuart monarchs and also a Protestant, Queen Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714; the most important constitutional landmark of her reign was the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707. She was succeeded by her second cousin, George I (1660–1727) of the House of Hanover, her closest living Protestant relative. Anne was painted by many of the major portraitists of the period, and mezzotints were made by many engravers from these portraits. This image of Anne, which has a realistic quality suggesting that it may have been the work of an immigrant Dutch delft decorator, may be a composite of prints by engravers such as George Vertue (1683-1756) or John Smith (1652-1743) based on portraits by artists such as Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723)), a leading painter of the time of Queen Anne, John Closterman (1660-1711), Jacob Gole (1660-1737), or Claes Claesz (1649-1702), which circulated during and after Anne's reign. Given its similarity to known dated 1730s examples, this punch bowl was probably produced after the reign of Queen Anne and may reflect Jacobite sentiments, who longed for the "rightful" kings of England - the Stuarts. Punch bowls played an important part in many secret Jacobite societies, fond ot toasting the "King across the sea." The oak leaves around the exterior may symbolize the Boscobel oak where Charles II (1630-1685), James' brother, hid from Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1651. The exterior decoration associates it with a group of delftwares traditionally ascribed to John Niglett, a potter at Limekiln Lane pottery. A dish with similar decoration in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery bears the initials and date "N / J E 1733" on the reverse. Earlier scholarship (W. J. Pountney, "Old Bristol Potteries", 1920) attributed the initials to John and Hester (Esther) Niglett, but there is no evidence to link the Bristol dish with the couple. Beyond this, wasters found at the site by Louis Lipski document the dish's production at the Limekiln Lane Pottery. The outside has eight oval panels separated by red-veined oak leaves, with two alternating, chinoiserie landscape scenes: Four panels have a "long Eliza" figure (a corruption of the Dutch term "lange lijzen", which translates literally to "long stupids") in red jackets and spotted yellow skirts with two houses, trees, foliage, and flying birds; and four panels have a man fishing from a boat, with a house, trees, foliage, and flying birds. The blue-edged rim has an interior border of floral scrolls alternating with dotted crosses, and an outer double blue band just below the edge; there is a double blue band below the panels, over two green bands separated by a series of red slashes, a double blue band, and a solid blue band around the lower half of the applied foot.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+60.126 |
