A Gold And Enamel Snuff Box, Frères Jordan, Berlin, circa 1795

Sotheby's, 26 October 1948, lot 32 (Property of a Lady);

Sotheby's London, 29 November 2006, lot 45;

Sotheby's London, 10 November 2015, lot 96

The subject on the lid features the character ‘Poor Maria’ or ‘Maria of Moulines’ from Laurence Sterne’s 1768 novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. The novel focuses on the young male hero Yorick, who on his travels, discovers a melancholic Maria mourning the death of her husband: “I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand: — a small brook ran at the foot of the tree. […] She was dress’d in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net — Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle.” (Op.cit p.138)

Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey was a sensational success, inspiring multiple recreations by notable artists such as Angelica Kauffmann who created several versions of Maria including one painted after 1777, interestingly depicting Maria holding a silk shawl decorated with the same dotted pattern as that in the present lot (see below).

The popularity of Sterne’s characters were such that they also appeared in various fashionable objects of vertu worn at the time, such as brooches, jasperware belt-buckles and snuff boxes. In 1789, Marie Adélaïde, the Duchess of Orléans was painted by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun wearing a dress pinned with a large cameo of Poor Maria at her waist (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille). 

For another snuff box painted with another version of poor Maria, see the first sale of this collection, Sotheby's New York, 17 June 2024, lot 127.