Artists frequently use ceramics in their paintings. In a still life they may be the focus of the picture, or one of a number of items in a composition included for their aesthetic merits. In a portrait or a genre subject their function can be simply as part of a room setting or as a way of understanding the character of the subject.
Whatever the purpose of the pottery in any painting, its appearance is not accidental: the artist has deliberately placed it in the picture. It may be something that the artist already owned, or that they have sought out specifically.
Madonna and Child
c.1740, salt-glazed stoneware Staffordshire figure 
Pottery figures have been made by Staffordshire ceramic manufacturers since the eighteenth century, although styles and preferred subjects changed from biblical and classical, to portrait figures and sentimental subjects.
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Georgian figures and toby jugs started to become desirable to collectors, while by the 1920s Victorian flatback figures, which had been out of fashion for several decades, started to be appreciated again. At the same time, contemporary makers such as Royal Doulton revived the production of large-scale figure making.
In the twentieth century, many artists included Staffordshire figures in their paintings, sometimes as the focus of their pictures, sometimes simply as set dressing, but never by accident.
Frederick Elwell, a popular and successful painter of genre subjects, often crowded his pictures with objects to underline the theme of his pictures. His The Last Purchase (The New Purchase) shows an elderly collector surrounded by a range of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pottery and carefully examining a blue-and-white vase.
On the table are two figures that are clearly identifiable: one is a brightly decorated figure of the actor James Quin (1693–1766) as Sir John Falstaff, a role he played several times between 1742 and 1757. Figures of this subject, based on the popular engraving by James McArdell (1729–1765) were produced in the eighteenth century by the Bow and Derby porcelain factories, and in Staffordshire by several earthenware factories.
Mr Quin in the Character of Sir John Falstaff
1740–1765, mezzotint by James McArdell (1729–1765) 
Quin as Falstaff
c.1775–1785, painted and gilded porcelain figure by the Derby Porcelain Factory 
In front of the Falstaff figure is one depicting St George and the Dragon. This is an earthenware figure, decorated under the glaze in a muted palette of greens and browns and identifiable as a subject produced by the potter Ralph Wood of Burslem, Staffordshire, working c.1785–1802.
Another Ralph Wood figure is identifiable in Harry Phelan Gibb's Still Life with Teapot, in which a figure of Venus, accompanied by Cupid and a dolphin, on whose tail she rests her hand, is juxtaposed with a Japanese teapot, a transfer printed dish and some lacquer ware, to form a jumble of early twentieth-century collectables.
The painting is one of a comparatively small number of still life studies that Phelan Gibb produced in the 1930s when he had moved away from the Fauvist influences of his earlier career.
William Denis Eden's portrait of his wife in the parlour of the Wheatsheaf Inn, Braishfield, Hampshire, also shows a Wood-type figure of a seated man, possibly a sailor, dating to c.1800, in the background.
The subjects for most Georgian figures were predominantly drawn from religious or mythological sources, but during the Napoleonic Wars with the threat of invasion from France, patriotic subjects, particularly of sailors, became popular.
These late eighteenth-century earthenware figures started to become collectable toward the end of the nineteenth century, partly because they were attributable to a small number of known potters and sometimes marked with their names, and partly because they were seen as less sophisticated than the porcelain figures of the same period, and so were regarded by many collectors as a type of naive 'folk' art.
The same judgements were made about the Victorian figures, often referred to by collectors as 'flatbacks' as it was only the front of the figures that were fully modelled and coloured. Frequently displayed on the mantelpiece, these figures were produced by numerous Staffordshire potteries and depicted a wide range of characters from portraits of contemporary celebrities to scenes from popular plays, and from patriotic subjects to sentimental lovers.
These brightly coloured but inexpensive figures were made in huge numbers from the 1840s to the 1890s.
Mary McCrossan's interior, with nine Victorian Staffordshire figures of various types displayed on the mantelpiece, gives an excellent impression of how decorative these figures could be en masse.
By the end of the nineteenth century, they had gone out of fashion but started to become desirable again in the 1920s to a new generation of collectors who could buy them for just a few pence.
McCrossan's crowded mantelpiece is treated freely but the figures are all identifiable and include a squat toby jug figure, a matched pair of taller figures, a spill vase depicting 'Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf', a reclining lamb on a dark blue base, an arbour group of 'The Rival', a tall spill vase supported by figures, a small black and white spaniel on a scrolled base, and a small spill vase supported by figures.
The mantelpiece and its figures are the cluttered backdrop to the more measured arrangement of a dessert of fruit and wine on a highly polished table, with the picture forming an impression of quiet comfort.
By contrast, Mark Gertler's study Staffordshire Group takes a single figure group of lovers in an arbour and removes it from any context, by depicting it against a backdrop of a draped dun-coloured cloth and deliberately muting the colours of the pottery, so that the play of light and shade is emphasised, while still depicting the figure in detail.
Sentimental subjects like this were popular throughout the Victorian period, with some models remaining in production for decades.
Figures depicting historical or contemporary people were another popular theme for the manufacturers, and Ernest Herbert Whydale's painting Easter uses an example of one of the most widely reproduced subjects for portrait figure, the founder of Methodism, John Wesley (1703–1791).
Depicted in clerical dress and holding an open bible, the almost complete lack of colour on the figure, with only touches of black, grey and gold, is typical of late Victorian figures. Whydale's father was a Methodist minister, and this figure may have been a family piece. Rather incongruously, a crucifix, rarely associated with Non-Conformism, hangs on the wall, but the cool tones of the Wesley figure, contrasting with the blood red of the primulas and the pale yellow of the spring primroses, symbolising renewal, are the focus of the picture.
Claughton Pellew-Harvey's View from the Studio includes a small figure of the poet John Milton (1608–1674). This was made by an unknown manufacturer, generally referred to by collectors as the 'Alpha factory', working in the period c.1840–c.1853.
Milton is just one of a number of items on the studio table and the figure is loosely painted with the poet's red breeches the only bright spot in the picture, drawing the eye to the view through the window and to the wintry Norfolk landscape beyond.
Although most Victorian flatback figures are unmarked and by unknown makers, some can be attributed to particular manufacturers and the figure group in Duncan Grant's Still Life with a Staffordshire Figure and a Wine Bottle is a case in point. This group was made by the Longton-based manufacturer Sampson Smith whose Staffordshire factory produced scores of different figures in the late nineteenth century.
The group, which is often erroneously called 'Robert Burns and Highland Mary', shows a kilted Highlander with his bagpipes sitting next to a young woman with a plaid over one shoulder. They are both seated on an artificial clock with gilt-painted hands. In an era when clocks were still expensive purchases, such faux timepieces which were decorative, if not useful, were made by several pottery companies as well as by Smith's factory.
Very occasionally it is possible to not only be certain of the manufacturer of a figure and its subject but also the source for the model, as is the case in Charles Maresco Pearce's painting Garibaldi.
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1802–1887), the Italian revolutionary and republican, was a popular figure in Britain in the 1850s and 60s. He visited Britain twice, once in 1854 before the Second Italian War of Independence, and again in 1864 after his failed campaign against the Papal States. On this visit, he was enthusiastically received in London, with huge crowds turning out to cheer him wherever he went.
This figure was produced by the firm of Thomas Parr in Burslem, Staffordshire, to captitalise on Garibaldi's popularity and is based on an engraving of him that appeared in the Illustrated London News on 16th January 1861. It is a larger and more detailed piece than many of the period and the reflection in the mirror shows the modelling and colouring extends to the back, which is unusual for this type of figure.
The production of pottery figures had declined dramatically at the end of the Victorian period as they fell out of fashion, but the renewed interest in collecting them in the inter-war years was satirised by Osbert Lancaster in his 1939 book Homes Sweet Homes as part of the 'Cultured Cottage' style of interior decoration with Victorian ornaments displayed 'for their allegedly humorous qualities'.
As a result of this revived interest in collecting and displaying ceramic figures, pottery manufacturers, such as the Staffordshire firm Royal Doulton, reintroduced the production of decorative figures. Although several of Doulton's early models depicted contemporary theatrical subjects or street vendors, by the 1930s, the company was increasingly commissioning modellers to produce sentimental figures of prettily dressed women and girls. These were immediately popular and remained a staple of the factory's output for the next century.
Edward Hartley Mooney's Marigolds of 1937 includes an example of Royal Doulton's 'Marie', whose dark blue dress contrasts strongly with the mustard and orange of the rest of the picture.
Modelled by Leslie Harradine (1887–1965) in 1930, 'Marie' remained in production for 58 years.
Although genre paintings and large interior subjects meant that objects, including ceramics, were often acquired to be used as 'props' in creating the composition, the small-scale and often intimate nature of most still life paintings meant that artists frequently drew on their own possessions to create them. As a result, the same pieces can occur repeatedly in different studies, giving a glimpse into some of the objects with which artists chose to surround themselves – including the pottery figures that they owned.
Miranda Goodby, Art UK Ceramics Researcher
This content was created as part of the Art UK Ceramics scoping project
Publication of this story was made possible with funding from The Headley Trust and The French Porcelain Society
