A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-1
A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-2
A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-3
A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-1A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-2A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure - image-3

Lot 582 Dα

A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure

Auction 1066 - overview Cologne
20.05.2016, 10:30 - Silver and Porcelain
Estimate: 3.000 € - 4.000 €

A finely painted Meissen porcelain Malabar figure

On an 18th century wooden socle with vernis martin style decor. Unmarked. Slightly warped due to a firing flaw, restored. H 36.8, H with socle 43 cm.
Ca. 1747 - 50, modelled by Johann Joachim Kaendler or Johann Friedrich Eberlein.

This figure of a man from the Malabar region in India and his female pendant were modelled for Meissen after 1747 and represent the foreign and exotic. The figures were inspired by the images of peoples of foreign lands in Denis Diderot's "Encyclopédie". The female Malabar figure can be securely attributed to Johann Friedrich Eberlein, but the male figure is not mentioned in his workshop records. In contrast to his female companion, the male figure has an entirely different physical presence. His facial features show a pronounced, almost portrait-esque sense of individuality as opposed to mere courtly elegance. This has led Abraham den Blaauwen to propose a possible attribution of the model to Kaendler.

Literature

Cf. an identical figure described as a Chinaman with similarly finely painted polychromy in the Rijksmuseum (in: den Blaauwen, Amsterdam 2000, no. 325). The same figure also listed in cat.: Triumph der blauen Schwerter, Dresden/Leipzig 2010, no. 379.