Figure of a Gardener (c. 1765–70): Art, History and Details

Figure of a Gardener (c. 1765–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bow Porcelain Factory (British).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Even though this figure and his counterpart (1945.36) are not accompanied by a sheep, these ceramic sculptures were sometimes known as “Garland Shepherds” during the mid-1700s. The name derived from a similar set produced by one of the Bow Porcelain Factory’s rivals, the Derby Porcelain Factory, in which the male figure holds a lamb. While these two factories often produced similar sets of pastoral, allegorical, biographical, and religious figures, the Bow Factory was known as one of the preeminent porcelain manufacturers, rivaled only by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory, with which Bow would later merge.

Object facts

• Title: Figure of a Gardener
• Date: c. 1765–70
• Creator attribution: Bow Porcelain Factory (British)
• Culture: England, London, Bow
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: soft-paste porcelain
• Dimensions: Overall: 24.5 cm (9 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1945.37

A detail from the museum

Due to the abundance of grapes, pears, plums, and other fall fruits spilling from the figure’s basket, this Gardener has also been considered a personification of Autumn.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. M. Luntz

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foote, Helen. "Shepherd and Shepherdess in Bow Porcelain." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 3 (March 1946): 23-24.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.