A Meissen porcelain plate with Chinoiserie motifs
Painted in the centre with a depiction of a bearded older man carrying a child piggyback and leading another by the hand. Blue crossed swords mark, blue dot in the basal ring. With slight glaze wear, primarily around the edges. D 22.4 cm.
Ca. 1735, décor attributed to Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck.
Rainer Rückert published all known data on the life of Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck for the first time in 1990. The artist was born in 1714 in what is now Poland, and was accepted as a painter's apprentice at the manufactory "at his pleading request" in 1727. The young man had a strong character and seems to have forged his own path at the manufactory from quite early on, continuously testing the limits of the working hierarchy. Today, his creations are inseparably linked with the most beautiful Meissen products of that time. His contoured Chinoiserie figures are in no way inferior to those of Hoerold, and his fanciful animal motifs appealed not only to the Saxon kings but also to the Prussian King Frederick II.
Löwenfinck used the scene depicted here on at least one other piece, namely a purple vase from a set of three that is now kept in the St. Annen Museum in Lübeck.
Literature
Cf. the decoration of three vases in the St. Annen-Museum in Lübeck (inv. no. 2658, in cat. Phantastische Welten. Malerei auf Meissener Porzellan und deutschen Fayencen von Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck 1714 - 1754, Dresden-Stuttgart 2014, no. 53 – 55).
For biographical information on Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck see Rückert, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1990, p. 171 ff.