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Lot Essay
LADY BAILLIE
This pair of birds was among of the collections of Lady Olive Baillie (1899-1974), the celebrated Anglo-American collector and society hostess. Lady Baillie’s large collection of Meissen animals and birds were to be found on custom brackets in the dining room of her lavish London townhouse in Lowndes Place, which she decorated under the guidance of the legendary French designers Armand-Albert Rateau and Stéphane Boudin, director of Maison Jansen. Boudin was a highly influential and celebrated decorator who oversaw the redecoration of the White House for Jackie Kennedy and who worked with many of the great collectors and society figures of the age, including Mrs. Charles Wrightsman and Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon.
THE MODEL
In February 1733, a month before the Modell-Meister Johann Gottlieb Kirchner was dismissed from the manufactory, he modeled a pied wagtail for the king’s Japanese Palace in Dresden. His workbook records: In der Monath Februar 1733 sind von mir Modelle verfertiget…Eine Bachstelze auf einem Baum sitzend, Lebensgrösse… Gottlieb Kirchner [in the month of February 1733 I completed the following models… a life-sized wagtail seated on a tree… Gottlieb Kirchner]. Four of these models were delivered to the Japanese Palace in November that year, a further four were delivered in 1734 and a further pair in 1735. By the time the 1770 inventory was taken, only 6 remained(1). In May 1740 Johann Gottlieb Ehder reworked Kändler’s earlier models, as his workbook records: Zwey Bachsteltzen in Thon verbutzt [two wagtails cast in clay](2). The former Japanese Palace wagtail models (with painted inventory numbers) have slightly higher tree-stumps than the present models, suggesting the present models are probably the type which Ehder worked on in May 1740. A further pied wagtail on a much shorter mossy base was also produced(3).
1. Two of these early models were sold from the Axel Guttmann Collection by Christie’s, London, on 5 July 2004, lots 166 and 167.
2. Cited by Sarah-Katharina Andres-Acevedo, Die Autonomen Figürlichen Plastiken Johann Joachim Kaendlers und seiner Werkstatt, Stuttgart, 2023, vol. 1, p. 233.
3. A pair of these are illustrated by Yvonne Hackenbroch, Meissen and other Continental Porcelain, Faience and Enamel in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, London, 1956, pl. 7, fig. 20, where the author attributes the models to Kirchner.
This pair of birds was among of the collections of Lady Olive Baillie (1899-1974), the celebrated Anglo-American collector and society hostess. Lady Baillie’s large collection of Meissen animals and birds were to be found on custom brackets in the dining room of her lavish London townhouse in Lowndes Place, which she decorated under the guidance of the legendary French designers Armand-Albert Rateau and Stéphane Boudin, director of Maison Jansen. Boudin was a highly influential and celebrated decorator who oversaw the redecoration of the White House for Jackie Kennedy and who worked with many of the great collectors and society figures of the age, including Mrs. Charles Wrightsman and Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon.
THE MODEL
In February 1733, a month before the Modell-Meister Johann Gottlieb Kirchner was dismissed from the manufactory, he modeled a pied wagtail for the king’s Japanese Palace in Dresden. His workbook records: In der Monath Februar 1733 sind von mir Modelle verfertiget…Eine Bachstelze auf einem Baum sitzend, Lebensgrösse… Gottlieb Kirchner [in the month of February 1733 I completed the following models… a life-sized wagtail seated on a tree… Gottlieb Kirchner]. Four of these models were delivered to the Japanese Palace in November that year, a further four were delivered in 1734 and a further pair in 1735. By the time the 1770 inventory was taken, only 6 remained(1). In May 1740 Johann Gottlieb Ehder reworked Kändler’s earlier models, as his workbook records: Zwey Bachsteltzen in Thon verbutzt [two wagtails cast in clay](2). The former Japanese Palace wagtail models (with painted inventory numbers) have slightly higher tree-stumps than the present models, suggesting the present models are probably the type which Ehder worked on in May 1740. A further pied wagtail on a much shorter mossy base was also produced(3).
1. Two of these early models were sold from the Axel Guttmann Collection by Christie’s, London, on 5 July 2004, lots 166 and 167.
2. Cited by Sarah-Katharina Andres-Acevedo, Die Autonomen Figürlichen Plastiken Johann Joachim Kaendlers und seiner Werkstatt, Stuttgart, 2023, vol. 1, p. 233.
3. A pair of these are illustrated by Yvonne Hackenbroch, Meissen and other Continental Porcelain, Faience and Enamel in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, London, 1956, pl. 7, fig. 20, where the author attributes the models to Kirchner.