A Meissen 'Earl of Jersey service'-type dish, Circa 1740

Miss H. Argyropoulo Collection, her sale, Christie's London, May 12, 1927, lots 35-36, acquired at the sale by [Hermann] Ball for a total of £155 7s;

With Hermann Ball, Berlin; 

Margarethe (née Knapp, 1878-1949) and Dr. Franz (1871-1950) Oppenheimer, Berlin & Vienna, bearing label (no. 237 in red);

Dr. Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), Amsterdam & Paris, inv. no. Por. 253 a/b (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. 1596/1);

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

Franz Kieslinger, Verzeichnis der Restbestände der Sammlung Mannheimer, [S.I.], 1941, p. 23, cat. no. 159

Ralph H. Wark, 'Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Porzellan- und Fayencemaler des 18. Jahrhunderts 1714-1754', Mitteilungsblatt Keramik-Freunde der Schweiz, No. 34, 1956, p. 18

Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 280, cat. no. 203

Plates of this distinctive type have traditionally been associated with the Villiars family, the Earls of Jersey. In 1860 Sarah Sophie, Countess of Jersey, made an inventory of her London residence in Berkeley Square in which she recorded "Old China- 33 Dresden plates Chinese figures", den Blaauwen, 2000, p. 279, cat. no. 202. In 1948 the renowned collector Ralph H. Wark purchased a group of similarly decorated Meissen wares, which was said to once have been in the collection of the Earls of Jersey. The group is now in the collection of The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida, and is illustrated in Pietsch, 2011, pp. 214-25, cat nos. 200-212. In 1949, the 9th Earl gave twenty-one plates to the National Trust which remain at Osterley Park House, Greater London. Wark considered the painting to be by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck. However, some pieces painted in this manner have impressed numerals and are therefore dateable to after Löwenfinck's departure in 1736, indicating that other artists at Meissen worked in this style, and that there may perhaps have been more than one service of this type.

Two dishes of this large size were in the collection of Otto and Magdalena Blohm, New York, sold, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, April 25, 1961, lots 426-427, the latter illustrated in Robert Schmidt, Early European Porcelain as collected by Otto Blohm, 1953, no. 24, pl. 8.

The standing figures on the dish are inspired by an engraving by Johann Christoph Weigel (1661-1726) from series 124, print B, illustrated in den Blaauwen, op. cit., p. 280.