Footnotes

• Provenance: Anon. sale, Sotheby's, 21 November 2000, lot 5
  With Jonathan Horne, 2003, his exhibition catalogue 03/4
  
  Most of the recorded cat models in English delftware are in the form of jugs. Only one similar example of a reclining cat is known, in the Fitzwilliam Museum. This is illustrated by Michael Archer, Delftware (2013), p.337. The Fitzwilliam Museum example is probably from the same mould as the present lot and the fur is treated in the same distinctive manner, but it has an additional candle nozzle applied to the cat's back. In addition our example has been placed on a rectangular base painted in bright blue. The brightness of the blue colour used for the rectangular base is paralleled by a small number of London delftware figures. In her ECC paper, Apollo Reconsidered, ECC Trans. (1998), pp.257-268, Margaret Macfarlane discusses the Apollo figure in the Curtis Museum in Alton, Hampshire, and the bust of Charles I in the British Museum, both of which are dated 1679. Both have a distinctive bright blue base and careful colouring, including a delicate rendering of the eyes that is reminiscent of the present lot.