The Music Lesson

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This large and ambitious figure group is one of the most important pieces of porcelain sculpture made at the Chelsea factory, England's premier ceramic manufactory in the mid-eighteenth century. The composition of a shepherd boy teaching a shepherdess to play the flute was derived from an engraving after a work by the French artist Francois Boucher (1703–1770). The skilled porcelain modeler at Chelsea, Joseph Willems (1716–1766), was responsible for realizing the composition in three dimensions.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art