A LARGE PAIR OF CHINESE EXPORT NODDING-HEAD FIGURES 18TH CENTURY

each standing in relaxed yet earnest pose, finely modelled with one detachable hand, the man holding a handkerchief in his fixed left hand and wearing a black coat with gilt borders and decorated with flower sprays over a yellow robe, his well-modelled face with natural hair sideburns, moustache and beard and covered with a black hat; the woman similarly modelled wearing a light green robe with black and gilt borders over a bright red tunic, her face also well-modelled with earlobes pierced for earrings and her hair drawn up in a tall loop

The present pair of 'nodding head' figures is possibly one of the earliest examples of sculptures of this type and is closely comparable with a pair, from the Gow Family collection and on loan in the Naples Museum of Art, illustrated in Willow Hai Chang, Song of Life: Chinese Art from the Gow Family Collection, Naples Museum of Art, Naples, Fla., 2000, pl. 45. It is noted, ibid., p. 126, that the 'style of dress, with its floral pattern and decorative borders, suggests the earlier fashion of the Ming dynasty'.

Figures of this type, also described as being modelled of 'plaster', are first recorded in a Western collection in 1777, when a group of figures were acquired by the Danish Asiatisk Kompagni and subsequently included in the Danish Royal collection on March 6, 1779 by Margrethe von der Luhe, Stewardess of the Household. For a discussion of these figures see B. Dam-Mikkelsen and Torben Lundbaek, Ethnographic Objects in the Royal Danish Kunstkammer 1650-1800, Copenhagen, 1980, pp. 173-179.

An important collection of 'nodding-head' figures can be found in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass., of which the most impressive are representations of a mandarin and his wife, both seated on mounted chairs, published in Carl Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, n.p., 1991, col. pl. 112. This seated pair of figures together with another pair of a Chinese official and his wife, ibid., col. pl. 112, were given to the Reverend William Bentley of Salem by Captain Hodges in 1790 and are mentioned in his diary. Another group, possibly the largest amongst royal collections, is in the Chinese Pavilion built as a birthday present for Queen Lovisa Ulrica by her husband King Adolph Frederick in 1753 at Drottningholm Palace, the largest residence near Stockholm of the Swedish Royal Family.

A 1764 painting by Johann Zoffany of Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, seated at her dressing table with her two sons, depicts two 'nodding head' figures of Chinese officials in the background. These Chinese figures were part of the decoration at the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, hence the figures often referred to as 'in the manner of the Brighton Pavilion'.

A pair of standing figures of a mandarin and his wife, attributed to the 18^th century, was sold in our New York rooms, 7/8^th April 1988, lot 353; and another was sold at Christie's New York, 23^rd February 1984, lot 77.