A Berlin KPM porcelain plaque with Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert
Signed lower right "A.Knye". Impressed sceptre mark K.P.M. H plaque 35.9, W 55 cm, H with frame 66.4, W 85 cm.
Painted by Anton Knye after a motif by Emanuel Krescenc Liska (1852 - 1903), circa 1900.
Little is known about the career of the Czech painter and printmaker Emanuel Krescenc Liška (1852- 1903) in Germany. His painting "Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert" was reproduced numerous times, especially on KPM plaques, until the First World War. Anton Knye from Lauscha in Thuringia first enjoyed a highly successful career working for the Ens & Greiner firm, who specialised in porcelain painting. He first began painting on ivory alongside porcelain when he became self-employed, although porcelain painting remained more lucrative for him. He acquired the majority of his porcelain plaques from KPM and decorated them with reproductions of Biblical subjects as well as portraits of famous rulers, for example copying the full-figure portrait of Queen Louis of Prussia by Gustav Karl Ludwig Richter (1823 - 1884).
Literature
This painter not listed in Neuwirth, Porzellanmarken-Lexikon, Braunschweig 1977, vol. II., p. 16 ff;
Newer information about this painter can be found in: Sandy Alami, Porzellanplattenmalerei aus Thüringen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, in: Studien zur Volkskunde in Thüringen, vol. 5, Münster 2014, p. 111 f.