King George II ca. 1760 Vauxhall This large-scale portrait bust depicting George II (1683-1760), king of Britain, is one of nineteen examples known,1 and these busts are commonly regarded as among the most ambitious porcelain sculpture attempted in eighteenth-century England. Remarkably, however, very little is known about the busts, including where and when they were made, the source of the model for the portrait, and for whom they might have been produced.2 The group has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate for many decades, and as is often pointed out, the busts have been attributed to almost every soft-paste porcelain factory operating in England in the mid-eighteenth century.3 The complete absence of comparable porcelain busts of this scale from any English factory makes an attribution particularly challenging. A persuasive approximate dating of the bust might provide a key to further understanding the history of the model, but on this point there is no unanimit