A Parian porcelain figure group; a woman seated to the left holding a child who reaches for a bunch of grapes held by a seated young man; wearing classical dress; set on rocky outcrop with flowers and fruit, a dog lying in foreground; oval base.

Queen Victoria made several visits to the Dublin Exhibition and described, in her Journal on 1 September 1853, watching the process of making porcelain, ‘which is very interesting & pretty to see’. During her visit the following day she paused in the porcelain section where she took a keen interest in techniques developed since the Great Exhibition. She and Prince Albert bought a number of other items at the Dublin Exhibition. Messrs Gregg & Sons, from whom this group was purchased, were a lamp and chandelier manufacturer, but at the Dublin exhibition they exhibited ceramics and glass on behalf of various English factories in addition to their own products.

The firm of Copeland had been much admired at the Great Exhibition for its display of ‘statuary porcelain’, which was described as ‘a very perfect imitation of marble’. The company claimed to have invented the material, although Minton made the same claim, and it was the latter who named it ‘Parian’ after the white marble from the island of Paros. Nevertheless, Copelands were renowned for their figure groups and were one of the few English firms to be mentioned specifically in the introduction to the official catalogue of the 1853 Dublin Exhibition.

Beattie did not work exclusively for Copelands; at the Great Exhibition the Queen purchased several groups that he had modelled for Minton. The Golden Age was inspired by a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses and portrays an era of innocence, an earthly paradise when Man lived in harmony with animals.

Parian figures and groups were produced in large numbers for the Art Union with the aim of widening interest in sculpture and enabling ordinary householders to own works of an appropriate scale and price. In 1849 the Art Journal identified Parian as a solution to ‘the necessities of a progressively improving taste and the demands made by the growing desire for those luxuries which mark the advance of civilisation’.

Text from Victoria & Albert: Art & Love.