""laughing Monkey" Zoomorphic Porcelain Figure Vide-poche, Circa 1870"
"Laughing Monkey" Zoomorphic Porcelain Figure Vide-poche, circa 1870Rare and amusing white-glazed porcelain vide-poche depicting a teasing monkey holding a woman's hat.
Ormolu-mounted on a Louis XV Style Base
circa 1870
XIXth Century French Work in the Style of Meissen after Johann-Joachim Kändler (1706-1775)
Johann-Joachim Kändler can be considered the greatest German sculptor-modeler of the mid-XVIIIth Century. Born near Arnsdorf, he apprenticed in Dresden with the sculptor Thomae, then became Johann-Joachim Kirchner's assistant at the Meissen Manufactory and finally succeeded him as director of the Manufactory's design studio.
In 1731, Kändler was appointed "Court Sculptor" to Augustus the Strong, and throughout his career, he achieved immense renown. Today, some of his finest creations are held in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Riijkmuseum in Amsterdam.
As early as the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, some artists placed great importance on monkeys, creating the artistic movement known as "singerie." Decorative monkeys were brought into fashion by Claude Audran and Christophe Huet.
An exotic animal par excellence, the monkey is renowned for its mimicry skills and its philosophical and political symbolism. It thus became a key player in the chinoiserie fashion.
The Meissen and Chantilly factories immediately adopted the monkey, playing on the ambivalence of a fascinating beast.
Many human attitudes could be mimicked and mocked; as demonstrated by the decorations of the Chantilly monkeys, the chinoiserie at the Château de Champs, and the monkeys at the Hôtel de Rohan in Paris. This fashion continued into the XIXth century.
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