Ceramics: B0021

Title

David Garrick

Technique

Pottery

Subject

Garrick, David

Character

Richard III : Richard III

Artist

Unknown

Date

1850s

Dimensions

Height: 26.5cm
Width: 20cm
Depth: 8cm

Other materials

Staffordshire pottery

Related works

Hogarth’s famous painting of Garrick as Richard awakening from his nightmare (V. 3), now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; but the figure is probably based on one of the numerous engraved versions, perhaps the one by E. I. Portbury, published as a plate to John Tallis’s Drawing Room Table Book. For more information on the Hogarth painting see the BDA, 6: 98-99. A smaller (17h) and simplified version, made from one two-piece mould, is shown in Pugh, p. 371, pl. 13, fig. 37. In that piece, Richard wears boots instead of shoes. A similar figure, Longton Hall porcelain, without the tent, is in the British Museum. These figures have various colour schemes.

Literature

Pugh, pp. 367-78, pl. 7, fig. 22, with gilt title ‘Richard the Third’

Richard sits on his bed in a tent, awakening from his dream before the Battle of Bosworth Field. He wears an ermine-edged green coat lined in yellow, a deep-blue tunic, lavender trunk hose and white stockings. The tent is bright orange, with a blue peak.
For an account of this great moment in Garrick’s performance see Kalman A. Burnim. David Garrick, Director (Pittsburgh, 1961).