Sammlung Oppenheimer | Important Meissen Porcelain

A Meissen Kakiemon 'Hob in the Well' dodecagonal dish, Circa 1730

Guaranteed Property

Auction Closed

September 14, 05:54 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

A Meissen Kakiemon 'Hob in the Well' dodecagonal dish, Circa 1730

painted with a scene from the life of Shiba Onkô, the youth about to throw a stone at a large jar to rescue his drowning friend, within a trailing floral and foliate border on the brown-edged rim, crossed swords mark in blue enamel, Dreher's mark of a cross in a circle twice, engraved Japanese Palace Inventory number N=35 W.

Width: 9½ in.

24.2 cm

The Royal Collections of Saxony, Japanese Palace, Dresden;

Margarethe (née Knapp, 1878-1949) and Dr. Franz (1871-1950) Oppenheimer, Berlin & Vienna, bearing label (by 1927) (no. 81 in black);

Dr. Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), Amsterdam & Paris, inv. no. Por. 216 (acquired between 1936 and 1939);

Dienststelle Mühlmann, The Hague (acquired from the Estate of the above in 1941 on behalf of the Sonderauftrag Linz for the proposed Führermuseum);

On deposit at Kloster Stift Hohenfurth;

On deposit at Salzbergwerk Bad Aussee;

Recovered from the above by Allied Monuments Officers and transferred to the Central Collecting Point Munich (MCCP inv. no. 1561/8);

Repatriated from the above to Holland between 1945 and 1949;

Loaned by the Dutch State to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 1952 and transferred to the museum in 1960;

Restituted by the above to the heirs of Margarethe and Franz Oppenheimer in 2021

Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Sammlung Margarete und Franz Oppenheimer. Meissener Porzellan, Berlin, 1927, no. 81, not illustrated

Franz Kieslinger, Verzeichnis der Restbestände der Sammlung Mannheimer, [S.I.], 1941, p. 21, cat. no. 129

Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 237, cat. no. 158

Porcelains of this type, primarily copying Japanese Kakiemon models in the Japanese Palace collection of Augustus the Strong and bearing crossed swords marks in blue enamel rather than underglaze blue, were included in a large order negotiated, circa 1729-30, between the Meissen manufactory's director, the Count of Hoym, and the Paris merchant, Rudolph Lemaire, whose intention it was to offer the pieces for sale in France as their much-in-demand Japanese prototypes. Shortly thereafter, as the King became suspicious of the business arrangement between the Count and Lemaire, Hoym fell out of royal favor and was exiled, Lemaire was detained and eventually deported, and the remaining porcelain in Hoym's townhouse was ordered seized and incorporated into the Royal Saxon Collection, where the pieces received their Japanese Palace inventory numbers. A comprehensive explanation and discussion of the entire Hoym-Lemaire affair is provided by Julia Weber, in a paper presented at the International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, London, June 16, 2012, 'A detective story: Meissen porcelains copying East Asian models. Fakes or originals in their own right?' and published the following year in the Fair's Catalogue, pp. 41-49.

The 1770 inventory of the Japanese Palace lists: "Vier und Zwanzig Stück detto [12 eckichte Schaalen] 2 3/4 Zoll tief, 10 Zoll in Diam. No 35", [Twenty-four [12 sided dishes](painted inside with pagodas)...No 35], Boltz, 1996, p. 72.

According to den Blaauwen, op. cit., only one dish bearing this inventory number remains in the Porzellansammlung, Dresden. Two are in the Rijksmuseum, illustrated in den Blaauwen, ibid., nos. 157 and 159, a fourth is in the David Collection, Copenhagen, and a fifth is in Dr Ernst Schneider Collection, Schloss Lustheim. A further dish was sold at Christie's London, February 25, 1991, lot 170.