Lebensgroße Tierplastik "Pelikan mit Karpfen"... Lot n° 2137

Sitting pelican with long neck bent backwards and head resting on it, holding a carp in its wide-open bill. Exceptionally naturalistic design with detailed modeling of the plumage, claws, beak and throat pouch as well as the tail and scales of the fish. Designed by Johann Joachim Kaendler, 1732, accentuated polychrome painting. Sword mark. Meissen. Circa 1924 - 1934.; H. 75 cm. 76 cm x 44 cm. Expressive, masterfully modeled pelican depicted with eyes wide open at the moment of devouring a fish. Indicated waves suggest that the basic artistic conception envisaged a pelican swimming in the water. In the early 1730s, Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706 - 1775) produced numerous animal sculptures, some of them life-size, on commission from Augustus the Strong for his Royal Collection in the Japanese Palace, with which he intended to build a porcelain palace in which animal sculptures would be displayed for representational purposes. For this purpose, Kaendler studied every detail of the native and exotic animals housed in the court menageries, their external appearance, the nature of their plumage or fur, beak or mouth, as well as their characteristic posture and manner of expression. By 1735, six examples of the animal sculpture of the pelican, which Kaendler called the "great spoon goose," had been delivered. The original 18th century model is in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (inv. no. PE 205). Cf. Pietsch, cat. Meißner Porzellanplastik, No. 221; Sponsel, Kabinettstücke des Meissner Porzellans, p. 96f. An exceptional life-size naturalistic molded porcelain figure of a pelican devouring a carp modelled by J. J. Kaendler, originally made for the Royal collection of August the Strong in the Japanese palace. Crossed swords mark. Meissen. Around 1924 - 1934.