Master Art

European Market

Price:  £5,900

A Chinese export porcelain soup plate painted in famille rose enamels with a central scene of a European couple beside a tomb, the rim with scattered flowers.

The image is from a series of four prints Cartouches Modernes avec des Differentes Figures by Augsburg printmaker Johann Esaias Nilson (1721-88). Another from the  Cartouches series is also known on export porcelain and one other (Meridies, from a Times of the Day series) by Nilson, so it is possible that they were part of the same order. They all have the same border and the enamels date them to the same period.

Nilson, sometimes referred to as the ‘German Watteau’, was a significant figure in the art of the rococo and a prolific artist and publisher of series of finely drawn prints. In 1761 he was appointed court painter to Prince Carl Theodor von der Pfalz und Bayern, and from 1769-88 was Director of the Augsburg Academy of Art.

References: Hervouët & Bruneau (1986) p155, No 7.38, a soup plate with this design and p144, No 7.9, the drinkers plate.