'Turkish Extinguisher' : The Rt Hon. William Ewart Gladstone MP (1809-1898)
Category
Ceramics
Date
1876
Materials
Earthenware
Measurements
82 mm (H)
Place of origin
Staffordshire
Order this imageCollection
Attingham Park, Shropshire
NT 341415
Summary
Figure, lead-glazed earthenware, painted with enamel colours, made in Staffordshire, England, about 1876. Full-length seated Staffordshire figure of William Ewart Gladstone, standing bare-headed in a pulpit, with his right hand on the turban of a Turkish man who stands against its front.
Full description
Earthenware figures were made in Staffordshire from the 18th century and were a cheaper alternative to European and English porcelains. Staffordshire figures became a form of visual literacy depicting key personalities and events of the day from politics, royalty, sport, literature and entertainment. In 1876 William Ewart Gladstone MP (1809-1898), the leader of the British Liberal party, published a pamphlet ‘Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East’, attacking the British Government for what her saw as a lack of action against the Ottoman Empire’s repression of the Bulgarian uprising. Gladstone called upon the government to withdraw its support for Turkey and to ‘’concur with the states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria.’’ It is from this text that the title of this Staffordshire figure is taken. Gladstone as the ‘Turkish Extinguisher’ stands at a pulpit or parliamentary bench, pushing his hand down on the head of a Turkish man.
Provenance
part of collection built up by Thomas Balston (d.1967). He wrote about the collection in Staffordshire Portrait Figures of the Victorian Age, 1958.
Marks and inscriptions
TURKISH EXTINGUISHER (black script)