1501
Important Petrus De Wolff Grisaille Teapot
Estimate:
$2,000 - $2,500
Sold
$1,900
Live Auction
June 10th, 2023 Gallery Auction l Paintings, Furniture, Decorative Arts, and Fine Rugs
Category
Description
Chinese export, Qianlong era, circa 1740
German market, with a band gold scrollwork at the rim and a central scene painted in black, partly in wash, as if after a pen-and-ink sketch, but, in reality, as a simplification of a seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century mezzotint. The gentleman is finely dressed and holds a sporting gun while his dog looks up at him inquiringly. This is said to be Peter Wolff, the historian of the Palatinate, who wrote General History of the Jesuits, re-published in 1789; after a print by Pieter Schenck of Elberfield, Germany. .
5 1/4 in. H.
China for the West, D. Howard and J. Ayers (Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications, London), vol. I, pp.250-251, no. 244. See also La Porcelaine de Compagnies des Indes a Décor Occidental, (F. & N. Hervouet & Y. Bruneau, Flammarion - Pere Castor, Paris 1986), p.71, fig. 3.17. Other known examples include a plate in the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
Condition
Tight hairline
Additional comments added on 6/5/23:
There is a tight hairline crack in back of pot; still displays very well.
Provenance
Background history of Petrus de Wolfe teapot; Although Schenk’s mezzotint served as the basis for this teapot, that mezzotint was by no means the original source. This was almost certainly based on a painting of 1686 by William Wissing (1658-1687) of the then 12-year-old John Cecil ‘The Lord Burghley’ (later the 6th Marquess of Exeter). The portrait was engraved in reverse by John Smith, and it was advertised in the London Gazette of 19-23 August, 1686.
The porcelain has reversed the engraving back again (as Schenk had done), but Schenk himself copied the earlier Smith engraving in almost every detail, with the exception of face and hair (the latter falls in golden locks before the shoulder in Smith’s print).
5 1/4 in. H.
China for the West, D. Howard and J. Ayers (Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications, London), vol. I, pp.250-25.
