Provenance

Fountaine collection, Narford Hall, near King's Lynn, Norfolk; by descent in the Fountaine family; (Fountaine sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London,16-19 June 1884, 2nd day, no. 176);[1] Oskar Hainauer [1840-1894], Berlin;[2] by inheritance to his widow, Julie Hainauer [1850-1926], Berlin; purchased 1906 with the entire Hainauer collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 17 October 1906 to William Andrews Clark [1839-1925], New York;[3] bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] For a detailed study of the Fountaine collection of maiolica see Andrew Moore, "The Fountaine Collection of Maiolica," The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1023 (June 1988): 435-447. Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753) was the originator of the collection.As Moore writes, no record of individual items in the collection dating from Fountaine's time is known, but eighteenth century texts and Narford Hall inventories describing the collection in general terms do exist, and it is likely that Fountaine acquired much of the collection during his second Grand Tour that began in 1714. Sir Andrew's heirs added items to the collection, and it appears that it was the Andrew Fountaine who lived 1808-1873 (Moore describes him as Andrew IV) who added most substantially to the core of his ancestor's original collection.
At the time of Andrew IV's 1835 inheritance from his father (also Andrew Fountaine, 1770-1835), he prepared an inventory of the maiolica that Moore publishes in the first appendix of his article. Between 1855 and his death in 1873, Andrew IV compiled a second inventory, which is contained in the "Family Book," held at Narford Hall at the time of Moore's article. The numbering of this inventory corresponds to numbers which, together with the monogram AF, were incised at some time in the nineteenth century on items in the collection. Moore's article includes a concordance of the numbered items in the second inventory with the numbered lots in the 1884 sale, and the NGA plate, which has "af 55" inscribed on its reverse, is identified as number 55 in part I of the second inventory (this part, of six, is described as "Small Plates less than 12 1/2 inches in diameter Total 131").

The second inventory also includes the initials "AF" in the margin next to 99 of the total of 276 maiolica entries. Moore concludes that "these initials are almost certainly [Andrew IV's] record of his own purchases" and that "by inference, the remaining items [with three exceptions]...stand the greatest chance of having been acquired by Sir Andrew Fountaine, the collection's originator, in the eighteenth century. Since the NGA plate entry does not have an "AF" next to it in the margin, it is probably one of the items acquired by Sir Andrew.

[2] See the annotated sale catalogue and pp. 63-70 of "The Fountaine Collection: Prices and Purchasers' Names," both in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische en Ikonografische Documentatie, The Hague, available at Brill Online, accessed 23 April 2020, copy in NGA curatorial files. [Report on the second day of the Fountaine sale], The Times (18 June 1884).
[3] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Series I.D, General business records, 1907-1964, reel 59, box 163, Hainauer collection sales ledger, July 1906-December 1909; copy in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1978

2005

2007

Bibliography

1897

1925

1955

1986

1988

Inscriptions

center reverse, Fountaine inventory number: af 55

Wikidata ID

Q62287917