A CHELSEA FIGURE OF AN 'ITALIAN BEGGAR'

See the footnote to lot 82 (the companion 'Italian Beggar' for the present lot) for further discussion of the modelling characteristics associated with Joseph Willems.

For an illustration of a similar version of this model (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) see Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and other English Porcelain, Pottery and Enamel in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, London, 1957, pl. 20, fig. 44, where the author mentions that in the Chelsea Sale Catalogue of 20th March, 1755, lot 25 is listed as 'Three Figures of an Italian doctor, a Chinese Mask, and a beggar'. See also Peter Bradshaw, 18th Century English Porcelain Figures 1745-1795, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 101, pl. 29 for an illustration of the 'Italian Beggar' (right), and the 'Blind Beggar' (left), also modelled by Willems and stylistically very similar.