Lot 11 Dα

“Following the tradition of his forefathers, Frederick William IV of Prussia had his portrait painted on porcelain relatively often. His likeness lent an additional significance to the vases he used as gifts. (...)
While the KPM archive records do not provide a great deal of documentation on the acquisition of source material, they do contain many references to the purchase of royal portraits. In 1947, for example, the directors of the manufactory commissioned the porcelain painter Wilhelm Escher to copy the portraits of the seven rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia in the collection of engravings in Schloss Montbijou - from the Great Elector Frederick William I through to King Frederick William IV - in order that these copies should then be copied onto a vase intended as a gift for the Freiherr von Stillfried. (...)
In the case of the porcelain painting in the Twinight Collection, in which the garden in front of the crown prince's residence of Schloss Charlottenburg is suggested in the background of the king's portrait, the original source was a painting, unsigned and undated, which has survived in the KPM archive. In this approximately square painting the portrait is placed in a round reserve, suggesting that it was made as the original for a round porcelain portrait in a rich bronze frame designed by Gustav Stier and given by the king to the Prussian envoy in London, Christian Karl von Bunsen, in 1844. This porcelain tondo is today in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin. The painting in the KPM archive may be a copy of a portrait (today unknown) by Franz Krüger, from whose hand we also have a very similar portrait which, however, differs from the KPM painting with respect to the background, the fullness of the king's features and a number of small details of the uniform.” (p. 143)
We would like to thank Dr. Samuel Wittwer for kindly allowing us to print this extract from the catalogue "Refinement and Elegance".