Tragedy: C.937-1928

Titles

Tragedy

Maker(s)

Production: Unidentified factory

Entities

• Figure
• Staffordshire figure (early)

Categories

• Lead-glazed earthenware
• Enamel painted figures
• Pearlware

Description

Lead-glazed earthenware figure of Tragedy painted with polychrome enamels

Earthenware, press-moulded, covered with blue-tinted lead-glaze, and painted in blue, green, yellow, red, purple, and black. A woman representing Tragedy, standing on an oval base beside a tombstone. She holds a dagger in her right hand and a cup in her left. She wears a long, flowing, sleeveless, purple gown and a white cloak draped over her right shoulder. The tombstone is yellow and inscribed ‘Memento’ [for ‘memento mori’]. The base is a pointed oval mound, painted in green, blue and red and with ‘TRAGEDY’ inscribed in impressed and blackened letters at the front. The back of the figure is flattened, but fully moulded and painted. The underside is recessed and glazed, with a central ventilation hole.

Notes

History note: Sotheby’s, 12 March 1909, lot no. 187; bought for £1.7s 0d. (one pound seven shillings) by S. Fenton of Cranbourn Street, London on behalf of Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, FRS, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L.Glaisher Bequest, 1928

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928-12-07) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century, Early
George III
Circa 1810 - Circa 1820

Note

This is one of a pair of female figures representing Comedy and Tragedy, personifications which date from ancient Greece. The Fitzwilliam collection holds three such earthenware figures, a pair (C.936A-1928 and C.936B-1928) and Tragedy (C.937-1928). Similarities in moulding and colours suggest that these may have come from the same maker. Pearlware figures decorated with enamels were in production by 1780, though the bright coloured enamels on these figures indicates an early 19th Century date. They were generally made at smaller potteries and are rarely marked. A cheaper alternative to porcelain figures, they drew on a variety of sources, including sculpture and porcelain figures. Classical, biblical, mythological and literary subjects were popular, as were animals and representations of rural life, seasons and trades. Here the bodies are simple 3-part moulds, with a few hand-modelled parts applied.

School or Style

Neoclassical