Royal Doulton Figurine The Cellist HN2226

The Cellist (HN2226) was designed by Mary Nicoll and produced by Royal Doulton from 1960 to 1967. Standing 8 inches (20 cm) tall, this beautifully observed character figure belongs to the Professions series and depicts a concert musician fully absorbed in his performance — seated on a stool atop a small stack of books, bow in hand, lost in the intimate world that a cellist inhabits when playing.

The figure is rendered in a palette of black, grey, and warm brown — the musician in formal black tuxedo, the warm honey tones of the cello itself providing the only colour contrast in an otherwise austere and deliberately elegant composition. The glossy glaze enhances both the depth of the black and the richness of the instrument, and the hand-painted detail extends to the musician's poised expression and the precise rendering of his posture — the slight forward lean, the placement of the bow arm, the quiet authority of a professional mid-phrase. It is a figure that rewards close looking.

Mary Nicoll was Royal Doulton's leading character figure modeller from the mid-1950s until her untimely death in 1974 at the age of 52, and her Professions series figures are considered among the finest work she produced. Where many Royal Doulton character figures rely on costume and narrative prop for their effect, Nicoll's musicians achieve something more elusive — a genuine sense of interiority, of a person inhabiting their craft rather than merely representing it. The Cellist is a particularly fine example of that quality, and it attracts a collector audience that extends well beyond the mainstream Doulton market into music lovers, professional musicians, and those drawn to figurative ceramics of genuine artistic ambition.

With a production run of just seven years, clean examples in first quality condition are considerably harder to find than the piece's modest profile might suggest. Fully insured shipping across Canada with tracking.