Goat and kid

Augustus the Strong's passion for porcelain led him to found the manufactory in the Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen. It was the first European manufactury to discover the secret of making true - or hard-paste - porcelain, using the same ingredients that the Chinese had known for centuries. Its initial wares were generally more useful than sculptural. The order by Augustus the Strong for the manufactory to produce almost life-size porcelain animals for a porcelain menagerie at the Japanese Palace presented a serious technological challenge. Nevertheless, the manufactory successfully produced 37 different quadrupeds and mythical beasts and 32 different species of bird between 1730 and 1736. However, the project was curtailed by the death of Augustus the Strong in 1733, and although initially taken up by his son, Augustus III (b.1696, d.1763), eventually abandoned.

The model for the Nanny Goat and Kid was made in August 1732 by Johann Joachim Kändler (b.1706, d.1775) and recorded in his work book. This model would then have been used to make a mould, and this mould then used to make the porcelain figures. Five 18th-century examples are known today in museums: two in the Dresden Porcelain Collection, one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the present example at Waddesdon. All five remained in Dresden until 1851, when one example (which must be this one) was sold to the porcelain dealer and maker Helena Wolfsohn. The two now in the USA left Dresden in the c20th.

Augustus the Strong wanted the figures to be naturalistically coloured, but the technical difficulties that such large figures posed meant that most of them were too fragile to submit to a high-temperature firing for enamel colours. Thus, some of the figures were painted cold, i.e. the colours were not fired. This surface was in itself fragile and has in most cases worn off, although one of the Nanny Goats in Dresden still retains substantial amounts of its original colouring.

The Japanese Palace porcelain animals were the subject of a PhD thesis by Samuel Wittwer, which has been published as a book in both German and English and from which most of this information has been taken.

Mia Jackson, 2018

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

495 x 645 x 380

Provenance

• One of five examples made for the Japanese Palace of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (b.1670, d.1733) between 1732 and 1734; acquired from the Dresden Porcelain Collections by Helena Wolfsohn in 1851; acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d,1898) or Miss Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by their great-nephew Mr James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); inherited by his widow, Dorothy de Rothschild (b.1895, d. 1988); gift of Dorothy de Rothschild, 1971.

Collection

• Waddesdon (National Trust)

Bibliography

• Samuel Wittwer; Die Galerie der Meissener Tiere; Munich; Hirmer Verlag (Munchen); 2004; pp. 202-204; p. 312
• Samuel Wittwer; The Gallery of Meissen Animals: Augustus the Strong's Menagerie for the Japanese Palace in Dresden; Munich; Hirmer Verlag (Munchen); 2004; pp. 202-204; p. 310

Related literature

• Samuel Wittwer; Ein königlicher Tiergarten: Tiere aus Miesener Porzellan; Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; 2000
• Samuel Wittwer; A Royal Menagerie Meissen Porcelain Animals; United States of America; J. Paul Getty Museum; 2001

Related files

• • Accessed 18/09/2018, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/202712
  • Accessed 18/09/2018, https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/127933
  • Accessed 18/09/2018, https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/119262
  • Accessed 18/09/2018, https://philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/169303.html?mulR=61306850|3

Subjects

• Animals/Mammals/Goat