The striking centrepiece of this exquisite object is a large enamel plaque depicting the personification of the Arts. Signed W H Craft for William Hopkins Craft (1731-1811), an almost identical version can be found in National Gallery of Victoria, Australia entitled The Goddess of the Arts.¹

Craft was one of the leading enamel and miniature painters working in London in the 18th century, active in London between 1765 and 1805, although very little is known of his early career.² He is reputed to be the brother of Thomas Craft, a painter at the Bow porcelain factory, although there is no evidence to support this.³ What we do know is he went into partnership with the enameller David Rhodes from 1768 as contractors under the employ of Josiah Wedgwood. In November 1774 he enrolled in the recently established ‘Royal Academy Schools’ where he exhibited enamels between 1774 and 1795.⁴ Craft often painted allegorical works, such as the present lot, his most famous works being the pair of allegorical portrait plaques of King George and Queen Charlotte from 1773 in the British Museum⁵ and the large allegorical plaque of Britannia from 1798 in the Victoria & Albert Museum.⁶

The present enamel, with its typically vivid colouring, reveals Craft’s stylistic debt to painters such as François Boucher (1703–1770) and Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807) although the composition is probably his own. Like the aforementioned works, Craft’s Goddess of the Arts is steeped in layers of allegorical meaning. The putto leaning on the woman’s lap appears to be drawing her eye, or at least the viewers, to the figure of Diana of Ephesus. A pagan symbol of fecundity, her statue in the Temple of Ephasus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world which was destroyed in 356 BC, leaving only Roman copies as a source. Above the statue is a winged hourglass for ‘t.mes Flies’ and a serpent biting its tail, known as ‘ouroboros’ and symbolic of the cycle of life. The foreground is littered with trophies alluding to the Arts and the female figure is leaning on a painting depicting Pliny’s The Discovery of Painting.

The portrait miniature of Queen Charlotte which surmounts the mirror is after Thomas Frye (1710-1762), an Irish artist, who published his mezzotint portrait of Queen Charlotte in 1762 (fig. 1). Frye was the director of the Bow porcelain factory from circa 1744-1759 and possibly knew Craft. One of Frye’s daughters, Sarah Willcock, decorated ceramics for Wedgewood which could have established a connection and might help explain why Craft chose to use Frye’s portrait of Queen Charlotte some ten years after it was produced.

The design and execution of the gilt-bronze mounts framing The Goddess of the Arts plaque and the mirror to the reverse (fig. 2) are typical of the output of James Cox (1723-1800) who was a leading retailer of jewelled clocks, automata and similar precious and intriguing ‘toys’.⁷ Cox’s career a was tumultuous one and a classic tale of boom and bust. Having set up his own workshop in Racquet Court, Fleet Street in 1745, immediately after his apprenticeship, he remained there until 1756. After an inauspicious start followed by his first bankruptcy, he began anew on a grander scale, focusing his attention on exporting his increasingly fanciful objects and complicated automata to China, India, Persia and the Ottoman Empire, where they were called ‘sing-songs’. From 1766 to 1772, he exported an incredible £750,000 worth of objects. When the risky Far Eastern market ceased to prosper, the goldsmith and marketing genius opened a ‘museum’ in Spring Gardens, London, acting as a showroom for his wares which were famously dispersed by lottery in 1775.

It is conceivable the present work, with its reputed connection to China, was one of Cox’s export objects and possibly an ambassadorial gift given its inclusion of a royal portrait. Craft is known to have supplied enamels for musical clocks and to date six closely related clocks have been identified with English gilt-bronze cases fitted with panels by Craft.⁸ These include a clock made for the Maharajah of Hyderabad,⁹ a clock in the Palace Museum, Beijing¹⁰ and his masterpiece, a magnificent musical and automaton clock celebrating the theme of love,¹¹ and which point to a possible collaboration between Craft and Cox for the manufacture of The Goddess of the Arts toilet mirror.

Sotheby’s would like to thank Dr Ian White for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry and who kindly provided access to an early manuscript of his monograph 'William Hopkins Craft – his Life and Work'.

¹ The National Gallery Victoria plaque, Accession Number 1995.758, is possibly that sold Replica Shoes ’s London, 9 November 1995, lot 52 and formerly in the Nachemsohn collects ion.

² For two short biographies see Aubrey Toppin, ‘William Hopkins Craft, Enamel Painter’, Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, Vol IV, 1957-1959, pp.14-18 and Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters, London, 1792, p.224.

³ Ian White, ‘Clocks and watches with enamels by William Hopkins Craft – Part 1’, Antiquarian Horology, Volume 34, No. 2, June 2013, pp. 179.

⁴ Ibid., p. 179.

⁵ British Museum, Accession Number 1891,0217.16

⁶ Victoria & Albert Museum, Accession Number C.102:1, 2-2011. The enamel commemorated the victories of Admirals Howe, Jervis, Duncan and Nelson at the Battle of Ushant (1794), Cape St. Vincent (1797), Camperdown (1797) and the Battle of the Nile (1798) respectively.

⁷ For a biography of Cox see Roger Smith, ‘James Cox’, Burlington Magazine, June 2000, pp.353-61.

⁸ White, op. cit., pp. 179-197.

⁹ Offered Replica Shoes ’s London, 3 July 2013, lot 39.

¹⁰ White, op. cit., pp. 186-188 and exhibited Momentos Da Eternidade, t.mes pieces from the Palace Museum, Beijing, held in Museu de Arte de Macau, December 2004.

¹¹ For detailed discussion see White, op. cit., pp. 188-196. The clock was sold Replica Shoes 's London, 4 October 1990, lot 137 and Replica Shoes 's New York, The Safra collects ion, 3 November 2005, lot 180.