Beschreibung:

An exceptional Dutch stipple-engraved light baluster goblet by 'Alius', circa 1760-80The generous round funnel bowl finely decorated with a chinoiserie scene depicting an elderly Chinese gentleman seated on a stool before a tree, playing a Chinese lute or pipa with both hands, the hairs of his beard and moustache picked out with fine lines in diamond-point, accompanied by a boy playing a Bianzhong comprising a set of musical bells suspended from an arch, the tall multi-knopped stem with an upper beaded dumbbell above an inverted baluster containing an elongated tear extending into the basal knop, over a conical foot, 22cm highFootnotesProvenance J van Buren Collection, Scheurleer, The Hague, 11 December 1808, lot 98, purchased by Hultman for 15 guilders Boom Collection, Breda Joseph Gregory Littledale Collection, Weybridge Anthony Waugh Collection, Wolverhampton, Sotheby's, 28 April 1980, lot 209 With Ward Lloyd, London Mühleib Collection, Bonhams, 2 May 2013, lot 58 With Kunsthandel Jacques Fijnaut, 13 March 2018 Stephen Pohlmann Collection Literature D H de Castro, 'Een en ander over glasgravure', Oud-Holland 1(4) (1883), p.285, pl.1883 Wilfred Buckley, D Wolff and the Glasses that he Engraved (1935), p.30 Hugh Tait, ''Wolff' glasses in an English private collection', Connoisseur 168 (1968), p.105, figs.5 and 6 George Turnbull and Anthony Herron, The Price Guide to English 18th Century Drinking Glasses (1970), p.78, Group 4, no.4/13 Frank Davis, 'Talking About Salerooms', Country Life, Vol.168 (August 1980), p.687 F G A M Smit, Uniquely Dutch Eighteenth-Century Stipple-Engravings on Glass (1993), p.106, no.Ch.18 Stephen Pohlmann, 'An Eclectic Collector', Glass Matters, no.14 (June 2022), p.22, fig.5 Exhibited 300 Years of British Glass 1675-1975, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Museum, 14 June 1975, no.208 Kunsthandel Jacques Fijnaut BV, TEFAF Maastricht, 10-19 March 2017, catalogue p.240 Although he never signed any of his engravings, 'Alius' was one of the most important Dutch master glass engravers of the 18th century. The incredible lightness of touch which he so breathtakingly achieved on this goblet demonstrates the remarkable degree to which this engraver mastered the stipple technique. It is perhaps no surprise that for many years this piece was considered to be the work of his contemporary, David Wolff. In his 1935 monograph on Wolff, Wilfred Buckley identified a group of glasses which he considered to be of higher quality both technically and artistically, with finer stippling and better draughtsmanship, than examples signed by Wolff himself, see p.26 and 'Group C'. These were subsequently attributed to 'Alius' in Frans Smit's 1993 catalogue. Whilst there are close similarities between the designs chosen by both engravers and they may have worked in association with one another, 'Alius' is the only Dutch engraver known to have stippled chinoiseries on glass and he attained a level of skill which undoubtedly surpassed that of Wolff. Only six other glasses stippled with chinoiseries by 'Alius' are recorded including the present lot, all of which incorporate the full-length figure of a Chinese gentleman. Two of these are similarly decorated with musical scenes in which an elderly seated man plays a Chinese lute or pipa. This includes a light baluster goblet of similar form to the present lot in the Brunnier Art Museum (Smit no.Eb.28) and a facet stem goblet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Smit no.Ch.19). Another goblet of similar size and form to the present lot but decorated with a different chinoiserie scene (Smit no.Ch.20) is illustrated by Hubert Vreeken, Glas in Het Amsterdams Historisch Museum (1998), p.258, no.293. The remaining two chinoiserie decorated goblets recorded include an opaque twist example in the Rijksmuseum (Smit no.Ch.17) illustrated by Pieter C Ritsema van Eck, Glass in the Rijksmuseum, Vol.2 (1995), p.432, no.548 and a further facet stem example in the Manoir de Saussey (Smit no.Ci.28).