An Unlikely Art Critic

28 April 2022

What does a bird expert have to say about the works of 18th century Meissen master Johann Joachim Kändler?

Richard Smyth

Richard Smyth is a writer and critic. His latest novel The Woodcock was published by Fairlight Books in July, 2021.

Johann Joachim Kändler, Falcon, 1731, H: 55.2 cm x W: 21.6 cm x D: 28.1 cm.
Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum, CC0.

It’s often said by those in the art world that the brilliance of Meissen porcelain is due to how realistic it is. ‘The yellowhammers look like yellowhammers and the cockatoos are spot on’. I do always wonder though whether these porcelain experts have actually seen yellowhammers in English field margins or sat out on a spring evening in Indonesia, watching cockatoos flying through the mangroves.

One man who truly knows his birds is Jon Dunn, a photographer and writer based in Shetland. When it comes to birds in art looking realistic, he explained that ‘the eyes have it. Eyes that sparkle with vitality and life make work pop and cause the viewer to engage with it positively.’ Dunn speaks as he scrutinises a hoopoe, a striking, pink-plumaged bird of southern Europe and Asia. A mid-19th century piece, the hoopoe, bright eyes and all, might be expected to fetch something in the region of £3,000, but then it is only a Meissen copy; birds by Johann Joachim Kändler, the original master, and Meissen’s most famous modeller, might be worth ten, twenty or fifty times that.

Kändler worked for Meissen for over 40 years, until his death in 1775, and copied from life. Either from the exotic birds shut up in the royal aviary at Moritzburg or the jays and magpies flying free in parks and gardens. The works he produced changed the world of porcelain. Nette Megens, Head of European Porcelain at Bonhams, fills me in on the Meissen story. It begins – as it so often does – with a powerful patron, Augustus II, Elector of Saxony from 1694 to 1733, known as ‘Augustus the Strong’. The Elector’s passion for Chinese and Japanese ceramics first drove the development of long-coveted high-temperature clays and, then, one of the founding Meissen projects: a porcelain menagerie, to be held at Augustus’s palace on the Elbe. The animals and birds were to be life-sized and coloured with oils, and the display of the menagerie was to be rich in royal symbolism: Augustus ordered a pair of regal lions, representing himself and his Electress, Christiane, to crown the exhibit. The dream was never entirely realised – Augustus died with the work unfinished – but the Meissen manufactory, officially founded at Albrechtsburg castle in 1710, was up and running.

For decades after Kändler’s death Meissen turned out birds modelled on his originals, they exhibit the Meissen traditions of intricate details and vivid colours but, of course, collectors know the worth of a Kändler bird – a pair of his jays from around 1740 sold for $137,000 a few years ago. Beyond birds, Richard Redding antiques currently has a pair of ‘probably by Kändler’ elephants for sale – price on enquiry. Jon Dunn knows elephants better than most but it’s in terms of bird identification that he’s a leading expert and I wanted to know what he really thought. ‘The jays are instructive,’ he tells me, looking over a pair of 19th-century pieces. ‘Whoever designed them had clearly looked at jays in real life, rather than just working from a dead bird. It’s not just that the plumage markings are accurately reproduced – the crown feathers of one bird are raised, something jays do when excited.’

A pair of Kändler period figurines, probably by Johann Joachim Kändler and Peter Reinicke, Meissen, circa 1743-50. Gilt and polychrome painted Meissen porcelain. H: 31.5 cm x L: 30 cm x D: 17 cm. each.
Image courtesy of Richard Redding Antiques.

I try him out on a more recent Meissen bird: a bullfinch. He reminds me that he is no ceramics-buff but then tells me that he’s impressed. ‘The bullfinch shows further care for accuracy. Rather than blocking out the colour of the grey mantle, the painter has allowed their brushstrokes to be visible, giving the impression of the texture of feathers. Look at the black primaries and the care for detail is finer still – you can discern the parallel barbs emanating from the central rachis.’

A life-sized magpie – 20th century, but closely based on a 1733 Kändler – is Dunn’s pick of the bunch. ‘The magpie combines both elements – the green iridescence of the black plumage is artfully reproduced, but the pose of the bird speaks volumes of someone who is intimately familiar with the behaviour of magpies - the jizz of the bird is compellingly accurate,’ he adds, using the bird watching’ jargon for the physical essence of a bird. ‘You can almost hear the scolding chatter of the agitated bird.

Assessing a pair of golden orioles, Dunn guesses that more exotic birds, such as these and the hoopoe, might have been modelled from dead specimens – they seem, he says, to lack the energy of the jays and magpie, which would have been easy for Meissen modellers to observe in life. As for a pair of 20th- century blue hoopoes – a variant that doesn’t actually exist – Dunn is dismissive: ‘You couldn’t pay me enough to have them in my house.’ It seems it’s unlikely that Jon will get picked up as an advisor on purchasing porcelain but his position is clear – if you’re going to buy Meissen go for common species, the jays and the magpies, birds whose intricate beauty, the modellers would have actually seen in living flesh and feather.

It’s important to note that Meissen birds don’t begin and end with Johann Kändler. If your pockets aren’t that deep, you can still get in on the wonder. In the 20th century, Max Esser, in particular, helped the firm to move beyond Kändler’s considerable shadow, and into the age of Art Deco: Esser rendered gulls, ducks, wading birds and falcons, among much else, with startling style and accuracy. That word again, ‘accuracy’: the value of close observation and precision reproduction that, for more than two hundred and fifty years, has brought such life to Meissen’s birds.