a French terracotta group, perhaps produced in the Sèvres Manufactory sculpture studio late 18th / early 19th century, depicting a recumbent woman looking in a mirror at the man dressing her hair with flowers whilst a child proffers her a bunch of flowers, rectangular base, inscribed to rear 'J. Leriche fect. / 1785', 51cm long, 37cm high, with a moulded giltwood stand 5.5cm high

Provenance: Private Collection; Christie’s, London, 7 June 2005, lot 298; Christie's, London, 6 April 1991, lot 81.

Leriche (sometimes Le Riche) born in Mons, Belgium, trained under Etienne Falconet (1716-1791) and Simon Boizot (1743-1809), joining the Sèvres porcelain factory as a sculptor in 1757 when nineteen, becoming a ‘modeller’ in 1768. In 1780 he was appointed ‘chef d’atelier’, a position he held for the rest of his career, until retirement in 1801. Leriche modelled a number of figures showing a woman at her ‘toilette’, both in fashionable Chinoiserie and European styles, as well as other similar Chinoiserie groups: see Sotheby’s, Paris, 20 October 2005, lot 171, for a similarly sized Chinoiserie group and a smaller Chinoiserie Toilette group sold Sotheby’s, New York, 21 October 2020, lot 287. Also see another of the present group at the Davids Samling, Copenhagen, Inv.No.B468.