A pair of Chinese painted pottery nodding head figures, Qianlong

H.: 23,5 cm

Condition: (UV-checked)
- The lady with a few chips to the rock rim and a chip to the bun.
- The official with a line retouched on his left leg, with related overpainting, a few small superficial chips to the rock rim, and his cane probably missing which was under his left hand. Some retouching to the sleeve section below this hand.
- The heads movable towards left and right, but no longer nodding.

品相：（已用紫外线光检查）
- 女士塑像的石头基座有一些飞皮， 她的发髻上面磕崩。
- 官员塑像左大腿有一条修复的线，石头基座也有一些飞皮， 另外可能他左手下的拐杖遗失。

Chinese nodding-head figures are first documented in England and Continental Europe as early as the 1760's - and indeed Zoffany's famous portrait of Queen Charlotte in her Dressing Room at Buckingham Palace painted in 1764 shows two such figures in the background (C. Saumarez Smith, Eighteenth Century Decoration, New York, 1993, p. 255, fig. 246). A related group of 'twenty-four figures of Chinese burnt clay with colouring 13 inches high, representing the Emperor and Empress of China and the whole Imperial household' are in the Danish Royal collection, acquired in an auction in 1777; a pair from the group is illustrated in B. Dam-Mikkelsen and T. Lundbaek, Ethnographic Objects in the Royal Danish Kunstkammer 1650-1800, pp. 173-179.

The vast majority were imported into England, Europe and America from Canton from the 1780's well into the early 19th Century. The great interest in these figures in England is derived in large part from the personal tastes of the Prince of Wales, later George IV. The Prince's interest in Chinese decoration was first expressed in his Chinese Drawing Room at Carlton House; however his desire to create an Oriental fantasy culminated in The Brighton Pavilion of 1802. The final achievement, an ornate palace of fantastical proportions, was due to the combined efforts of the Prince himself and his principal designers, John and Frederick Crace, over the next twenty-five years. A number of Chinese figures of this type were prominently displayed in the corridor of the Pavilion (J. Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, Boston, 1984, pp. 169-176).

Although the specific manufacturers and dates of such 'nodding head' figures - whether for Export or in Europe - are comparatively rarely recorded, a documented pair of nodding-head figures dating to 1803 'copied from the life and brought from Canton' are in the collection at the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (C.L. Crossman, The China Trade, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991, p.317, col.pl. 112). Similarly, a group of related nodding-head figures were sold from the collection of David Style, Esq., Christie's house sale, Wateringbury Place, Maidstone, Kent, 31 May-2 June 1978, lots 200-204. Some of these figures were signed 'J.D. Gianelli...August 25 1807'. Gianelli was probably Dominico Gianelli (d. 1841), assumed to be the son of the sculptor in plaster J.B. Gianelli, who supplied four statues for the Great Hall of Carlton House in 1789 (R. Gunnis, The Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1965, pp. 166-67).