Painted with children playing and swinging on ropes between two trees within elaborate gilt scrolls, the border with four panels of fruit and flowers.
Other plates from the series, are in the Arnhold Collection[i], (Now in the Frick Collection), New York, three in The Metropolitan Museum, New York[ii], The Gardiner Museum, Toronto and The Hans Syz Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC[iii]. Some of the children’s games depicted on these plates follow closely designs from ‘Les Jeux et plaisirs de l’enfance‘ by Jacques Stella, published in Paris in 1657. Some like ours are more loosely adapted. Elements of these children’s games were also introduced to the German-speaking lands through the engravings of Daniel Marot from his Second Livre d’Ornaments via Paul Decker and Jeremias Wolff.[iv]
Les Jeux et Plaisirs de l’Enfance (1657), after Jaques Stella (1636-1697), Bibliothèque Municipal de Lyon
[i] Cassidy-Geiger, 2008 p.642, no. 325
[ii] Metropolitan Museum accession no.s 1974.356.316, 1974.356.317 and 50.211.243
[iii] Syz, Miller & Rűckert 1979, p. 514, no. 347
[iv] I am grateful to Maureen Cassidy-Geiger for pointing this out.
Condition:
Losses to gilding and some wear, no restoration
Provenance:
Sir Jeffrey Tate and Klaus Kuhlemann
Bonhams, Important Meissen Porcelain from a Private Collection, Part I, 16 November 2005, lot 48
Literature:
Manners 2024
‘E & H Manners, ‘Decorators on Ceramics and Glass’, 2024, no. 22
References:
Cassidy-Geiger 2008
Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710-50, (2008), no. 325
Syz, Miller & Rűckert 1979
Hans Syz with J. Jefferson Miller II and Rainer Rückert, The Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, (Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., 1979), vol. 1 p. 514, no. 347
