A pair of Nymphenburg porcelain vases with floral still lifes
"Vase No 20-26" models with handles formed as female heads, each fired in two parts and screw-mounted. Decorated on the display sides with finely painted bouquets of summer flowers in baskets. With the original metal mountings. Impressed "bindenschild" mark, one incised "No. 22" and both "1/5". The shaft of one restored. Localised retouches to the gilding. H 33.3, D 27.5 and 27.7 cm.
Around 1825/30, decor tentatively attributed to Johann Baptist Reis (Reiß) or Franz Xaver Nachtmann.
It seems like an obvious choice to attribute the decor of these vases to Nymphenburg's most renowned flower painter Franz Xaver Nachtmann (1799 - 1846). Nachtmann reached the pinnacle of his career at the Nymphenburg porcelain manufactory by 1823 at the latest, when he was appointed head painter of the flower department (Hantschmann 1997, p. 449), .
For a long time, therefore, such flower paintings were attributed exclusively to Nachtmann. However, Katharina Hantschmann was also able to identify Johann Baptist Ries (or Rieß) (1753 - 1825) as an outstanding flower painter on the basis of the archival records. A magnificent vase with splendid fruit and flower still lifes after Rachel Ruysch, from 1824/25 (formerly Bavarian National Museum collection inv. no. 77/287, illustrated in Hantschmann 1997, cat. 191), initially executed by Ries and completed by Nachtmann after his death in 1825, is not only a testimony to the painterly quality of both artists, but rather proof of the artistic and technical closeness that united these two Nymphenburg artists.
Literature
This form pub. in Hantschmann, Nymphenburger Porzellan, 1797-1847, Munich/Berlin 1996, p. 182, mod. 437.
For these artists see ibid, p. 331 and 449 ff.
Cf. this ground colour in Ziffer, Nymphenburger Porzellan. Sammlung Bäuml, Stuttgart 1997, no. 1191-1196.