Although catalogued as ‘Continental’, this mid-19th century porcelain figure of a seated semi-nude ballet dancer (right) carries impressed marks for the factory established by the English entrepreneur Francis Gardner in the town of Verbilki near Moscow in 1766.
Gardner is best known for its series of idealised ‘old Russian’ characters: typically peasants, vendors and tradesmen who lived in the empire. However, this 8½in (22cm) figure on its rococo base is from a series of more unusual and more risqué subjects made in the 1840s-50s. Skinner of Boston sold a group of them in 2006 for prices between $5000-10,000.