Lot 162
162
A BERLIN K.P.M. GREEN-GROUND 'VEDUTA' VASE (AMPHORA MIT GREIFENKOPFHENKELN)

Details
A BERLIN K.P.M. GREEN-GROUND 'VEDUTA' VASE (AMPHORA MIT GREIFENKOPFHENKELN)
CIRCA 1845, BLUE EAGLE OVER KPM AND IRON-RED PRINTED DECORATING MARK

With gilt scrolling arched griffin head handles, the vase of amphora form, the gilt neck and foot chased with a band of oak leaves, finely painted in colours with the Könliche Schloss, Berlin, reserved on the green ground within an oval gilt border chased with egg-and-dart and surmounted by a crown and two laurel branches, minor wear to gilding, one griffin ear chipped
21¾in. (55.2cm.) high

Lot Essay

The monument to Frederick the Great depicted in the foreground was created by the noted German sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch between 1838 and 1851. His portrayal of the Emperor in contemporary dress and not in Roman costume reinforced Goethe's earlier description of Berlin artists as "masters of naturalism" who "reveal above all the prosaic spirit of the age" and added fuel to this "Costume Controversy (Kosümstreit).

The veduten paintings executed contemporaneously by the KPM porcelain factory exemplify this philosophy, popular across Europe in the first half of the 19th century.

Cf. Derek E. Ostergard, Along the Royal Road, Berlin and Potsdam in KPM Porcelain and Painting 1815 - 1848, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, 1993, p. 30, fig. 1-18.