
John Sandon
Consultant
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Sold for £12,500 inc. premium
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Consultant
Provenance:
Sotheby's sale 22 May 1984, lot 75
John Philip Kassebaum, Sotheby's sale 1 October 1991, lot 92
With Mark & Marjorie Allen
Benjamin F. Edwards III, Christie's sale 26 January 2010, lot 374
Two other delftware bowls are recorded with this subject. One from the Brian Morgan Collection was exhibited by Jonathan Horne, A Collection of English Pottery, Part IV, no.87. This is now in Winterthur Museum, no.1984.30. The other, a much larger bowl inscribed 'Lawrence Harrison 1748', is in the Thomas Greg Collection. This is illustrated as the frontispiece of Lars Tharp's book Hogarth's China (1997), where the source print is also discussed at length.
On these bowls the unknown delftware painter has achieved a quite remarkable degree of fine detail. One of Hogarth's most famous illustrations, A Midnight Modern Conversation is a most appropriate decoration to use on a punchbowl as in the centre of the scene a porcelain bowl, hung with lemon peels, sits on the table among the many revellers.
In 1810 Minister William Bentley visited a descendant of Massachusetts Governor J. L. Philips and was shown a "'punchbowl of Delft' decorated with A Midnight Modern Conversation."