King George II ca. 1760 Vauxhall This large-scale portrait bust depicting George II (1683–1760), king of Britain, is one of nineteen examples known,[1] and these busts are commonly regarded as among the most ambitious porcelain sculpture attempted in eighteenth-century England. Remarkably, however, very little is known about the busts, including where and when they were made, the source of the model for the portrait, and for whom they might have been produced.[2] The group has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate for many decades, and as is often pointed out, the busts have been a

King George II ca. 1760 Vauxhall This large-scale portrait bust depicting George II (1683–1760), king of Britain, is one of nineteen examples known,[1] and these busts are commonly regarded as among the most ambitious porcelain sculpture attempted in eighteenth-century England. Remarkably, however, very little is known about the busts, including where and when they were made, the source of the model for the portrait, and for whom they might have been produced.[2] The group has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate for many decades, and as is often pointed out, the busts have been attributed to almost every soft-paste porcelain factory operating in England in the mid-eighteenth century.[3] The complete absence of comparable porcelain busts of this scale from any English factory makes an attribution particularly challenging. A persuasive approximate dating of the bust might provide a key to further understanding the history of the model, but on this point there is no unanimity of opinion. A date of manufacture close to the time of George II’s death in 1760 would allow consideration of several different factories as a place of origin, whereas a date of the mid-1740s, as has been proposed,[4] would indicate that the busts were almost certainly made at the Bow factory, the only plausible possibility at this time. At least three of the busts are accompanied by porcelain wall brackets, of which one is considered original to the bust.[5] The design of the wall brackets incorporates two children who represent Fame and Britannia (fig. 59). It has been argued that these two figures were intended to symbolize one of George II’s most significant military triumphs, the Battle of Culloden (1746), at which the Jacobites were defeated.[6] According to this logic, the iconography of the bracket indicates that the brackets, and hence the bust, were made around 1746. Furthermore, it is proposed that the busts accompanied by these brackets are additional versions of a

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