A museum quality Meissen porcelain dish with merchant navy scenes
Decorated with a continuous water landscape populated with large and particularly finely painted figures of merchants and sailors on a harbour. The base of the bowl with a rocky landscape in puce camaieu. Blue crossed swords mark, dreher's mark with two circles for Johann Gottlieb Kühnel sen., remains of a gilt D mark and a number. H c. 7.9, D 17.1 cm.
C. 1735, decor attributed to Johann George Heintze, presumably inspired by the prints of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, called Dietricy.
The figures on this dish are reminiscent of compositions by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (1712 - 1774), who was known as Dietricy at least since his trip to Italy in 1743. He was an extremely talented painter capable of working in all genres. He became court painter at Dresden in 1741. Due to his popularity, the demand for prints also grew, and naturally the Meissen manufactory used the compositions that fitted into their repertoire, especially as Count Heinrich Brühl was one of his patrons. One can speculate about whether Dietrich played a direct role in the design of this museum quality piece, and the idea certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Provenance
Hans H. Mischell, Cologne.
Private collection, Westphalia.
Literature
Cf. den Blaauwen, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 2000, cat. no. 220.
Cf. also Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710 -50, New York-London 2008, cat. no. 160.
Cf. also Brattig (ed.), Meissen Barockes Porzellan, Stuttgart/Cologne 2010, cat. no. 199.