A superbly-painted Liverpool delftware bowl, circa 1748


Finely painted in bright blue, the full centre with a scroll-edged cartouche painted with 'A Midnight Modern Conversation' after Hogarth, the scene titled beneath, within a border of vines, the exterior with three landscape reserves on a neat diaper-pattern ground, one of the panels including a windmill, 25.8cm diam
|Provenance:Sotheby's sale 22 May 1984, lot 75John Philip Kassebaum, Sotheby's sale 1 October 1991, lot 92With Mark & Marjorie AllenBenjamin F. Edwards III, Christie's sale 26 January 2010, lot 374Two other delftware bowls are recorded with this subject. One from the Brian Morgan Collection was exhibited by Jonathan Horne, A Collection of English Pottery, Part IV, no.87. This is now in Winterthur Museum, no.1984.30. The other, a much larger bowl inscribed 'Lawrence Harrison 1748', is in the Thomas Greg Collection. This is illustrated as the frontispiece of Lars Tharp's book Hogarth's China (1997), where the source print is also discussed at length.On these bowls the unknown delftware painter has achieved a quite remarkable degree of fine detail. One of Hogarth's most famous illustrations, A Midnight Modern Conversation is a most appropriate decoration to use on a punchbowl as in the centre of the scene a porcelain bowl, hung with lemon peels, sits on the table among the many revellers.In 1810 Minister William Bentley visited a descendant of Massachusetts Governor J. L. Philips and was shown a "'punchbowl of Delft' decorated with A Midnight Modern Conversation."