Sammlung Oppenheimer | Important Meissen Porcelain

A very rare Meissen dated trompe l'oeil waste bowl, Circa 1729

Guaranteed Property

Auction Closed

September 14, 05:54 PM GMT

Estimate

12,000 - 18,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

A very rare Meissen dated trompe l'oeil waste bowl, circa 1729

painted on front and reverse, in the manner of J. G. Höroldt, with vignettes of figures at various pursuits in gardens within Böttger lustre, shaded iron-red and gilt foliate scrollwork-edged shaped quatrefoil cartouches, one side with a trompe l'oeil pinned fragment of a calendar dated November 1729 and the other with part of an inscribed scroll suspended from the rim, the interior with a spray of indianische Blumen beneath a gilt foliate scrollwork border around the rim edge, unmarked.

Diameter: 6¾ in.

17.1 cm

Hoth Collection, Berlin, sale, Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, February 23-24, 1926, lot 113, pl. 5;

Margarethe (née Knapp, 1878-1949) and Dr. Franz (1871-1950) Oppenheimer, Berlin & Vienna, bearing label (by 1927) (no. 145 in black);

Dr. Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), Amsterdam & Paris, inv. no. Por. 298 (acquired between 1936 and 1939);

Dienststelle Mühlmann, The Hague (acquired from the Estate of the above in 1941 on behalf of the Sonderauftrag Linz for the proposed Führermuseum);

On deposit at Kloster Stift Hohenfurth;

On deposit at Salzbergwerk Bad Aussee;

Recovered from the above by Allied Monuments Officers and transferred to the Central Collecting Point Munich (MCCP inv. no. 1592/2);

Repatriated from the above to Holland between 1945 and 1949;

Loaned by the Dutch State to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 1952 and transferred to the museum in 1960;

Restituted by the above to the heirs of Margarethe and Franz Oppenheimer in 2021

Dresden, Japanese Palace, 2010, cat. no. 62

Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Sammlung Margarete und Franz Oppenheimer. Meissener Porzellan, Berlin, 1927, no. 145, pl. 63

Gustav E. Pazaurek, Meissner Porzellanmalerei des 18. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1929, pp. 47-48

Franz Kieslinger, Sichergestellte Kunstwerke in den besetzten niederländischen Gebieten, Vienna, 1941, no. 403

W.B. Honey, Dresden china, an introduction to the study of Meissen porcelain, London, 1954, pp. 78, 100, 189, n. 148

Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Saksisch / Dresden China 1710-1740, Amsterdam, 1962, fig. 22

Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 109, cat. no. 56

Ulrich Pietsch & Claudia Banz, Triumph of the blue swords: Meissen porcelain for aristocracy and bourgeoisie 1720-1815, exh. cat., Dresden, 2010, cat. no. 62

The court and state calendar, Königlich-Polnischer und Churfürstlich-Sächsischer Hoff- und Staats-Calender, was a handwritten record of events, holidays and celebrations (and weather) at the royal court in Dresden; its published version only introduced in 1728. Understandably, the printed calendar reported the events of the previous year, giving the names of members of the royal family, of the government and staff, listing all court and religious holidays and reporting the weather of the period. The published calendar for 1730, reflecting the events of 1729, is completely unknown, so the weather fragment dated November 1729, as rendered on the bowl, does not survive in the State archives and may represent a lost edition, a hiatus or the published calendar of a different court or city. In fact, the Dresden court calendar usually gives the year in Roman numerals, whereas here it is given in Arabic numerals. Nevertheless, the trompe-l’oeil is otherwise consistent with the way such calendar pages appear on Meissen porcelain.

The partially legible inscribed faux-page to the verso can be read as:
'[…] Deo … […]/
… Michael, 1000 rthl. sage/
Solches ich versprech … als/
…rthen gangbahren Cu/
… empfangen solches …'

The fragments seen on these lots could relate to the merchants' correspondence that was available to painters in the factory.

Very few 'calendar'-decorated Meissen wares are recorded. An exceptional plate decorated with a Danish Court calendar page for November 1735 may have been included in a Royal gift to King Christian VI of Denmark (1699-1746) and his consort Sophia Magdalena (1700-1770). The plate bears the birthdays of both the King and Queen and is in the collection Rosenberg Castle, Copenhagen, inv. no. 12-266. A desk set with decoration taken from the same calendar page is in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, inv. no. 1922-194, illustrated in Hein and Bencard in Cassidy-Geiger, 2007, p. 184, figs. 8-16/18, alongside the calendar page source, fig. 8-17. A single teabowl painted with a harbour scene with undated calendar page was sold at Christie's London, October July 7-9, 1997, lot 296, and three Hausmaler Aufenwerth workshop-decorated teabowls, one bearing year 1737, were in the Siegfried and Lola Kramarsky Collection, New York, sold at Christie's New York, October 30, 1993, lot 22.

A teabowl and saucer probably from this service was in the sale of the Hoth Collection in 1926, as cited above, lot 112.