A Grotto with Four Children representing the Four Seasons: C.3181-1928

Titles

A Grotto with Four Children representing the Four Seasons

Maker(s)

Factory: Frankenthal Porcelain Factory
Director: Hannong, Paul Anton
Modeller: Lanz, Johann Wilhelm

Entities

• Figure group

Categories

• Hard-paste porcelain

Description

Hard-paste porcelain, painted in enamels, and gilt. Four little children symbolizing the Four Seasons, seated round a grotto with a tree on top

Hard-paste porcelain, press-moulded, hand-modelled, and painted overglaze in turquoise-green, green, yellow, flesh-pink, puce, red, purple, reddish-brown, dark brown, and black enamels, and lightly gilt. The underside has eight supports radiating from the centre. The rounded square low mound base has a Rococo scrolled and frilled edge picked out in puce and gold, and rises up in the middle into a grotto with four brown rocky supports, and a slightly domed turquoise-green top on which is a double tree trunk whose roots extend over the top. The top of the base outside the grotto is turquoise-green. Four small nude children holding attributes of the Seasons are seated on rocks at the corners of the grotto: Spring, a boy with a basket of flowers on his knee; Summer, a girl holding an apple in her outstretched right hand and ? in her left, with two wheat-sheaves on the ground beside her; Autumn, a boy with dark brown hair holding a goblet in his left hand and a bunch of grapes in his right; Winter, a boy drawing a red-brown cloak over his head and warming his hands at a fire with yellow and red flames.

Notes

History note: Cyril Andrade, Duke Street, St James’s, London, from whom purchased on 10 September 1917 for £50 by Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest

Place(s) associated

• Frankenthal ⪼ The Palatinate ⪼ Germany

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

Paul Hannong Period
18th Century, third quarter
Circa 1757 CE - 1759 CE

School or Style

Rococo