Snuffbox with Battle Scenes and Portrait of the Empress Elizabeth

The white enamel ground covering this box is intended to simulate the appearance of porcelain, which was used for the production of boxes, particularly in Meissen, but also at the Imperial Porcelain Factory established in St. Petersburg in 1744. Scholars are divided as to whether boxes of this type were manufactured in Birmingham, England, and then sent as blanks to be painted in St. Petersburg or whether they were entirely English products made for export.

Painted with delicate black strokes over a white enamel ground is a battle scene showing two mounted warriors fire their weapons at each other, perhaps during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Billowing clouds of gun smoke obscures the scene. Other vignettes show two soldiers guarding a camp on the box's front; two soldiers at a campsite over which fly two cannon balls, on the back; and either mounted or seated soldiers near a town, on each end.
The box opens to reveal inside the lid a naïvely painted portrait of the Empress Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1741 to 1762. She wears the collar of the Russian Imperial Order of St. Andrew First Called and holds the orb in her right hand.

Condition: There is a crack extending through the image of the Empress as well as numerous cracks in the white enamel.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Sale, Sotheby's, New York, December 8, 1993, Lot 631; Jean M. Riddell, Washington, D.C., 1993, by purchase [Leo Kaplan as agent]; Walters Art Museum, 2010, by bequest.