The Fortune Teller

A young woman standing with the remains of a staff in her left hand, and in apparent apprehension as her future and fortune is being read by an exotic, enigmatic, bearded figure, apparently a foreign traveller, and markedly a poet by the traditional laurel wreath on his head. She wears a sprigged skirt, yellow overdress with deep pink sleeves and a white apron; leaves and flowers across the lacing at her breast and hair. He wears a long, pink, yellow-lined, coat, white breeches and red over-boots with gilt on brown decorated tops, and leans across her clasped hand; a large gilt edged manuscript or folder between the figures. All in the modelling style of the Muses Modeller and the palette and painting style of the Muses painter. Heavily modelled; some splitting under base; the base unglazed with central hole.Thick white glaze, heavily applied. H. 7.0 in (17.9 cm).

Provenance: Taylor Collection; Simon Spero, London, April 2012.

The probable source of the model is a print by Pierie Alexandre Aveline, 1702-1760, titled La Bonne Adventure after a painting by François Boucher, 1703-1770, probably for a Beauvais tapestry (see Fitzwilliam Museum, catalogue notes to that museum’s example, and Poole, Julia, and Fitzwilliam Museum, 1986, Plagiarism personified?: European pottery and porcelain figures).

Other examples:

(i) Rous Lench Collection, Sotheby’s, 1 July 1986, Lot #188, almost identical to the Collection example in modelling and decoration.
(ii) Bradshaw, 1992, A40, as Gipsy Fortune-teller group after Boucher, circa 1752-3.
(iii) Newham Collection, Gabszewicz, 2000, #76, as circa 1752, enamelled in a more sombre palette.
(iv) MFA Boston, Katz Collection, Savage, pl.44.
(v) Freeman Collection, #196, p.127, circa 1752; possibly later decorated, the male figure described as a ‘bearded gallant’;
(vi) Fitzwilliam Museum, later, circa 1756, Gift Mrs W. D. Dickson.