Day 206 - Porcelain figurine of a woman with fruit
January 24, 2020
Galley 543 is the first of several galleries housing the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection of European sculptures, paintings, and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Beginning in the 1920s, the couple began collecting 18th century porcelain figurines from most of the major porcelain centers of Europe. I'm struck by how many of these centers there were, including manufacturies in Switzerland, Spain, Russia, France, and Denmark, most of which I've never heard of. (Well, I have heard of Royal Copenhagen!)
The signage notes that the Linskys favored figures that typified the 18th century interest in representing figures from daily life, as well as harlequins and other characters from the commedia dell'arte. But this strikes me as a bit disingenuous on the part of the Met, since a great many figures on display are of hunchbacks, exotically robed sultans, or Chinese men, who are portrayed as caricatures, with bald heads and Fu Manchu mustaches. Were the Linskys in the least bit embarrassed about purchasing such highly stereotypical depictions, I wonder? Did they find them amusing, as I do not? Did they see it as necessary to collect these as well as the genre figures that are more pleasing to modern sensibilities, in order to present a complete picture of 18th century tastes?
In any case, today's object is one of those genre figures - a hard-paste porcelain statuette 5 or 6 inches high of a woman with a fruit basket, made in the Gardner factory in Russia around 1820. I like it for its combination of simplicity and fine detail. The woman wears a gold pillbox hat and a long purple smock over a white blouse. I would describe the smock as plain, except for the 15 tiny gold dots, presumably representing buttons, down the front; how painstakingly these must have been applied! In her left hand she holds a large red flower, in her right a basket containing perhaps a dozen tiny red globes representing some kind of fruit (large strawberries, perhaps?). Despite its small size, the figure has a dignity that feels absent to me in the figurines of exotic foreigners.
The signage notes that the Linskys favored figures that typified the 18th century interest in representing figures from daily life, as well as harlequins and other characters from the commedia dell'arte. But this strikes me as a bit disingenuous on the part of the Met, since a great many figures on display are of hunchbacks, exotically robed sultans, or Chinese men, who are portrayed as caricatures, with bald heads and Fu Manchu mustaches. Were the Linskys in the least bit embarrassed about purchasing such highly stereotypical depictions, I wonder? Did they find them amusing, as I do not? Did they see it as necessary to collect these as well as the genre figures that are more pleasing to modern sensibilities, in order to present a complete picture of 18th century tastes?
In any case, today's object is one of those genre figures - a hard-paste porcelain statuette 5 or 6 inches high of a woman with a fruit basket, made in the Gardner factory in Russia around 1820. I like it for its combination of simplicity and fine detail. The woman wears a gold pillbox hat and a long purple smock over a white blouse. I would describe the smock as plain, except for the 15 tiny gold dots, presumably representing buttons, down the front; how painstakingly these must have been applied! In her left hand she holds a large red flower, in her right a basket containing perhaps a dozen tiny red globes representing some kind of fruit (large strawberries, perhaps?). Despite its small size, the figure has a dignity that feels absent to me in the figurines of exotic foreigners.
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