An Extremely Rare and Fine Chelsea Porcelain Figural Group of ‘The Tyrolean Dancers’. Beautifully modelled by Master Modeller Joseph Willems after a Meissen porcelain original by Johann Friedrich Eberlein. The man wearing a black theatrical mask and swinging his companion in a circular dance. Both with their right legs raised and hands clasped around each other’s waist. She with a yellow bodice over a purple flowered dress gilt with highlights and he with a turquoise jacket and puce hat applied with feathers and bows. Standing on an irregularly modelled scroll-moulded circular base with further gilded highlights and applied with pastel coloured flowers and leaves.

This rare group possibly the ‘fine groupe of a man and woman dancing’, mentioned in the 1755 Chelsea Sale Catalogue. Bow and Derby examples of this model are recorded though Chelsea porcelain examples are far rarer and more finely executed by the master modeller Joseph Willems. This model is undoubtedly one that Chelsea proprietor Nicholas Sprimont arranged, through his friend Sir Everard Fawkener, to borrow from the porcelain collection of Meissen figures belonging to Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, which were stored at Henry Fox’s Holland House. Hanbury-Williams writes in 1751 to Henry Fox and says,’ I have told Sir Everard, that, if he will go to your house, you will permitt him, and anyone He brings with him, to see my China, and to take away such pieces as they may have a mind to copy.’ Originally modelled at Meissen in 1735, the figure was remodelled at Meissen in the early 1740’s and it was at this stage that the theatrical mask was added to the male figure. See the example from the British Museum, illustrated by Elizabeth Adams, ‘Chelsea Porcelain’, Fig 9.3, p. 122.