A round plate decorated with polychrome chinoiserie scenes Johann Christoph Horn

Meissen, c. 1725
Hard-paste porcelain
Crossed swords mark in underglaze blue and painter’s monogram “JCHO” (interlaced) in iron-red
Diam. 22.2 cm

Description

Exhibition
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 1999–2009

Literature
Mus. cat. Hamburg 1999, vol. I, no. 50; Lübke 2008, pp. 10–16; exh. cat. Leipzig 2010, p. 174


This round plate on a foot ring is richly decorated with a broad foliate border running around the ledge and a fine gold lacework border on the cavetto. In the well is a round medallion framed with a double line of iron-red containing a chinoiserie scene with a Chinaman standing on brown ground flanked by rocks and strongly vertical sprays of “Indian” flowers.
Four elongated quatrefoil reserves excepted from the foliate border show chinoiserie scenes typical of the early Meissen period—numerous figures on green and brown swards are engaged in various forms of business, with coastal landscapes or Chinese architecture in the background. Two of the motifs are to be found on sheet 104 of the Schulz Codex (see exh. cat. Leipzig 2010, p. 174).
When Johann Christoph Horn (1692–1760) was recruited by Johann Gregorius Höroldt to work for Meissen in 1720, he was already a trained figure-painter working at the Eggebrecht faience manufactory in Berlin. The 1725 Meissen list of painters reveals that, at that time, he was better paid than any of the other three figure-painters, Schindler, Dietze, and Heintze (BA: IAb 1, fol. 109 and IA a 8, fols. 187 and 253); in the 1731 register of staff, he still held pride of place at the top of the list, being described as a painter “in blue and coloured Japanese figures and flower work” (Im Blauen und bunden Jappanischen Figuren und Bluhmen-Werck).
From the 1725 list of staff onward, Horn’s work as a painter shows clear stylistic differences when compared to the known signed works by his above-mentioned colleagues from the early Meissen period.
Not only do all the pieces in question, tureens and stands that originally belonged together, bear the unmistakable monogram on the underside, but they also display the same gold lacework border, the same stylised Chinese figures in landscapes featuring rocks and flowers, and the wooden gate motif in the wells of the stands.
The quatrefoil reserves on the tureens and stands are conventional in being decorated with a variety of very finely executed chinoiserie scenes (in addition to the present stand, extant examples include a tureen and stand in the Dresden Porcelain Collection and a further tureen in the Gianetti Collection in Saronno, see mus.cat. Hamburg 1999, vol. I, no. 50, p. 97). While in 1988 Ingelore Menzhausen still attributed the monogram to Höroldt (see Menzhausen 1988, ill. p. 31), in 1999, she interpreted it in Horn’s favour (see mus. cat. Hamburg 1999, vol. I, no. 50, p. 97).

Bibliography:

Exh. cat. Leipzig 2010
Exotische Welten. Der Schulz-Codex und das frühe Meissener Porzellan. Edited by E. M. Hoyer and Thomas Rudi. Exh. cat. Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig, March 12–June 13, 2010. Leipzig, 2010.

Lübke 2008
Lübke, Diethard. “Schindler? Horn?—Oder doch Dietze? Zuschreibungen von Malereien auf frühen Meißner Porzellanen.” In Keramos 200 (2008), pp. 3–20.

Menzhausen 1988
Menzhausen, Ingelore. “Höroldt und sein ‘Seminarium’—Meissen, 1720 bis 1730.” In Keramos 120 (1988), pp. 3–38.

Mus. cat. Hamburg 1999
Meissener Porzellan des 18. Jahrhunderts: Katalog der Sammlung Hoffmeister; publication of the catalogue on the occasion of the Hoffmeister collections’ transfer to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in March 1999. Hamburg, 1999.

 

REF No. 0008