Lot 49 Dα

"The painter Gottfried Wilhelm Völcker was one of the most colorful personalities among the artists of the KPM in the first half of the nineteenth century. This is underlined by the existence of two files on his person specially kept by the KPM and the royal administration. These files show him to have been a highly talented artist whose lack of discipline regarding working hours, slow pace of work, and high ambitions made him the exception rather than the rule at the strictly run Prussian manufactory. In 1802 he became head of the KPM floral painting department. (...) From his first days at the KPM onwards, Völcker led a kind of artistic double life; as well as working as a painter in the manufactory he also produced oil paintings. Although other porcelain painters did much the same and exhibited their works at the Academy exhibitions, none of them operated on the same scale as Völcker, who doubtless pursued this sideline so intensively because he was intent on establishing himself in Berlin’s artistic circles as a “proper painter.” In his “Geschichte der königlichen Porzellanmanufaktur in Berlin seit ihrer Entstehung,” Georg Frick concluded that from the time of his appointment as head of a painting department in 1802, Völcker no longer painted on porcelain and could not properly use the newly developed porcelain paints; furthermore, he was not nearly as good a teacher as Hermann Looschen because “his private activity in painting flowers and fruit in oils distracted him too much from his employment, as did his poor health.” We know from signed porcelain pieces and from the Academy catalogs that Völcker did in fact continue to paint porcelain while he was head of a painting department and drawing teacher, but this quotation still indicates the dominant position that oil painting had assumed in his work." (p. 275)
We would like to thank Dr. Samuel Wittwer for kindly allowing us to print this extract from the catalogue "Refinement and Elegance".