‘Fantastical worlds. Painting on Meissen porcelain and German faience by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck 1714–1754’ at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

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1735, 1736-1737, 1741-1744, Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, baluster vase, Bayreuth, circa 1730, Doppelkürbisvase, Fulda, Knöller period, lidded vase with yellow ground and mythical beast, Meissen, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, tankard, terrine with Sulkowski-Ozier-relief and Chinese characters

Löwenfinck gilt als berühmtester Keramikmaler des 18. Jahrhunderts.Rechte: Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatlich Museen zu Berlin;

DRESDEN – To mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden presents a comprehensive exhibition of this artist’s oeuvre, bringing together around 100 selected porcelain and faience exhibits from the Dresden Porzellansammlung, private collections and renowned museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.- To mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden presents a comprehensive exhibition of this artist’s oeuvre, bringing together around 100 selected porcelain and faience exhibits from the Dresden Porzellansammlung, private collections and renowned museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, plate, porcelain, Bayreuth, Knöller period, 1736-1737. Copyright: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg / Herbert Hunter

Inspired by the painted decoration on Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the collection of August the Strong, he created a fantastic world inhabited by vibrantly colourful, fabulous creatures. He later took these exotic motifs, as well as his knowledge of both East Asian and European flower painting, with him as he travelled, transferring them from one workplace to the next. As Löwenfinck did not sign his works, for a long time it was impossible to attribute them with any certainty: as a result, his oeuvre long remained completely unrecognised, even among specialists.

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, plate, Meissen, 1735. Copyright: Dresden State Art Collections / Jürgen Läsel

The life and works of this exceptional artist were the focus of several years of research conducted by the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. The results of this project are now presented in a comprehensive anniversary exhibition. Systematic evaluation of archive sources, including manufactory reports and case files, shed light on previously little known aspects of social conditions in the porcelain and faience manufactories of the time, and enabled a fundamental and thorough reassessment of his work.

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, plate with ribbed trim. Copyright:Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München/Bastian Krack

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, plate with ribbed trim, detail. Copyright:Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München/Bastian Krack

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, baluster vase, porcelain, Meissen, circa 1730. Copyright: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg / Maria Tuszynska-Thrun

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, lidded vase with yellow ground and mythical beast, Meissen, 1734. Copyright: Dresden State Art Collections / Jürgen Läsel

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, lidded vase with yellow ground and mythical beast, Detail, Meissen, 1734. Copyright: Dresden State Art Collections / Jürgen Läsel

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, lidded vase, Meissen, 1734. Copyright: Dresden State Art Collections / Jürgen Läsel

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, lidded vase, Fulda, 1741-1744. Copyright: Reiss-Engelhorn Museums Mannheim, Photographer: Maria Schumann

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, Doppelkürbisvase, Fulda, 1741-1744. Copyright: Decorative Arts Museum, National Museums in Berlin, Saturia Linke

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, terrine with Sulkowski-Ozier-relief and Chinese characters, Meissen, 1734. Copyright: Berlin, private collection / Stefan Buchner

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, terrine with Sulkowski-Ozier-relief and Chinese characters, Detail, Meissen, 1734. Copyright: Berlin, private collection / Stefan Buchner

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, Vase from a set with erbsgrünem rear, interior shot, Meissen, circa 1730. Copyright: Dresden State Art Collections / Jürgen Läsel

Adam Friedrich Löwenfinck, Tankard, Bayreuth, Knöller period, 1736-1737. Copyright: Bavarian National Museum, Munich / Walter Haberland

Covered vase painted with polychrome chinoiserie scenes by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–1754), Meissen, ca. 1735

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Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, ca. 1735, Chinoiserie, Covered Vase, Meissen

Covered vase painted with polychrome chinoiserie scenes by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–1754), Meissen, ca. 1735. Photo courtesy Röbbig München

“AR”-monogram in underglaze blue; former’s sign “XII” for Johann Christoph Leibnitz (1702–1748) – H. 39 cm. Price on request.

This egg-shaped vase with short cylindrical neck has a domed cover with protruding rim and pointed ball finial. Both cover and vase are covered with a violet ground enclosing two quatrefoil reserves on each. Inserted in the ground are birds and stylised sprigs of indianische Blumen; the reserves contain polychrome travelling scenes in the chinoiserie style, in spite of which the Meissen term for these figures going about their business on greensward platforms was “japonisch.” On one side of the vase the decorator depicted a woman carrying a child who is saying a fond farewell to a little man; on the other we see a man riding a creature of fable and holding up a pennant on a long stick with his left hand. He is accompanied by two further men, the larger of whom is leading the animal on a rein while the other, smaller of stature, strides ahead supporting himself on a stick.

The reserves on the cover both show a male figure holding a fan, one resting on the ground. In all the scenes the sky features a golden sun with a red surround, while the figures are flanked by shrubs of indianische Blumen and the foregrounds typically show a black rock and colourful flowers.

The attribution of the painting to the hand of Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck is made possible by comparison with a faience tankard marked “F.v.L” (Friedrich von Löwenfinck) from the Bayreuth manufactory of Knöller. The same chinoiserie scenes are also found on a further Meissen piece in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a narrow-necked vase with a yellow ground, while three vases in the Sankt Annen-Museum in Lübeck display the same violet ground with integrated “Indian” flowers and birds and also have reserves with very similar chinoiserie scenes. This body of evidence makes it largely certain that all the works mentioned were decorated by Löwenfinck.

Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck was one of the most celebrated ceramics decorators of the eighteenth century. He initially worked at Meissen before continuing his career at the faience and porcelain manufactories of Bayreuth, Ansbach, Potsdam(?), Chantilly, Fulda, Höchst, and Straßburg-Haguenau. After having done superlative work at Meissen, he passed on his skills and expertise at the other manufactories where he worked, thus exerting an enduring influence on their output.

In 1727 Löwenfinck became an apprentice at the Meissen porcelain manufactory, where he was subsequently recorded as a painter “in coloured flowers” [in bunden Bluhmen]. On account of his great artistic talent, he was entrusted by the director of painting, Johann Gregorius Höroldt, with executing a wide variety of subjects including chinoiseries and indianische Blumen, and with making copies of Chinese and Japanese originals from the Royal Porcelain Collection of Augustus the Strong in the Japanese Palace in Dresden. Furthermore, Löwenfinck is regarded as the grand master of creatures of fable, which he painted on yellow-ground vases and also on the “Service with the Black and Gold Stripes.” In 1736, following a disagreement with the tableware administrator Hage, Löwenfinck absconded from Meissen, presumably because he was receiving little recognition and being poorly paid for his remarkable work. Thanks to Löwenfinck’s defection, an artistic transfer took place in which Meissen decorative motifs entered the repertoires of numerous other manufactories.

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