Modelled by J.J. Kändler, with an elderly man wearing a cap and loose purple banyan with black and gilt flowers, holding a stick and seated next to his young wife, his wife leaning over to kiss him, a small dog on her lap, wearing a red and black bodice and flowered yellow skirt, two harlequins behind him, one in a chequered jacket and taunting him with feathers, the other holding a dish with sliced celery, his turquoise jacket with playing cards, on a mound base applied with flowers and foliage
7⁷⁄₈ in. (20 cm.) high

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Lot Essay

This satirical group was first modelled in 1741. Kändler’s Taxa describes the Harlequin who ‘laughingly crowns him with cock’s feathers’ while another ‘offers him celery’.¹The feathers were a symbol of the old man being cuckolded by his wife with another man, while the celery was thought to be an aphrodisiac. Vanessa Sigalas suggests that the figure with the celery may be Scapin or Scapino from the Commedia dell’Arte, noting that the subsequent Meissen Directory of Models referred to the group as Scapinengruppen.²

An example of this group from the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, Basel, is illustrated by Ingelore Menzhausen and Jürgen Karpinski, In Porzellan verzaubert, Basel, 1993, pp. 142-143, and the Shimmerman Collection example is illustrated by Vanessa Sigalas and Meredith Chilton, All Walks of Life, A Journey with The Alan Shimmerman Collection, Meissen Porcelain Figures of the Eighteenth Century, Stuttgart, 2022, pp. 462-64.

1. 'Group of four figures, an old man seated in a nightgown with a cane in his hand and a feather cap on his head, about to caress a young woman with a small dog on her lap; behind them stands a Harlequin who laughingly crowns him with cock’s feathers, but a lad comes up in front and offers him celery_ _ _ 18 thalers - -' (‘1. Groupgen von 4. Figuren bestehend, ein alter Mann sizt in Schlaff Peltz einen Stock in der Hand habend und eine Feder Müze auffm Kopffe, bei einem jungen Frauenzimmer, solche zu caressiren, auf deren Schooß ein Hündgen liegt, hinter ihm steht ein arleqvin, welcher lachend ihm Hahn Federn auffsezet, vorne aber kömmt ein Kerl, der ihm Selleri praesentirt _ _ _ 18. Thlr.- -'), cited by Johannes Rafael, “Zur ‘Taxa Kaendler’” in Keramos No. 203/204, 2009, p. 48.

2. Sigalas and Chilton, ibid., Stuttgart, 2022, p. 462 and p. 464.