Ceramics and Glass Circle of Australia

FLOWERS OF FANTASY

Three Centuries of Flower Painting

CURATORIAL TEAM

Patricia Begg
John Scarce
Harry Blackburn

Published by the Ceramics and Glass Circle of Australia Inc.
P.O. Box 243 Hawksburn 3142

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Editor: Chris Begg
Photography: Patricia Begg

FLOWERS OF FANTASY
THREE CENTURIES OF FLOWER PAINTING

Flowers of Fantasy has been developed as an exhibition to show the breadth of flower painting from its earliest development in the eighteenth century through to today.

In response to the new love affair with naturalistic and botanical flower painting which had swept Europe, the painter, J.G. Höroldt at Meissen in 1740, developed a new style and technique of painting flowers called deutsche-blumen (German flower painting). The style is painting with a fine brush in the manner used on ivory or enamel and is of single or loosely arranged bunches placed at random or scattered over the surface of the porcelain.

Painting was slow, laborious and costly with only six colours in the range and several having to be fired independently of each other.

There are two fine examples of Meissen painting surrounded by many English and Continental factories that followed the fashion. The exhibition shows English pieces from Chelsea, Bow, Longton Hall, Derby, Worcester and West Pans, European pieces from Sèvres, Mennecy and Vienna. Some of the finest eighteenth century pieces have been assembled for this part of the exhibition.

The nineteenth century saw the introduction of many new colours, a new porcelain body in England, bone china, and a new painting style. The style was developed by Edward Billingsley in the 1780's while he was working at Derby. It relied on the porcelain to add the highlights to the painting. It was a faster and more efficient method of painting and was consequently more economic. We show an exciting range of work painted in this style from the factories of Derby, Worcester, Chamberlain, Coalport and Minton.

The end of the nineteenth century brought a new and much more flamboyant style of flower painting where the painting covered the entire surface of the piece. This style has remained popular through to today and we show pieces painted by Raby, Curnock and Dewsbery of the Doulton factory.

The changes in colour, technique and ceramic body have contributed to a wide and beautiful range of porcelain wares both for the table and ornamental. On these pieces we can see the flowers which caught the imagination of the English and European painters who affected the taste of the purchasing public from the wealthiest in the land though to the emerging middle class.

The Circle wishes to thank the five public collections and sixteen private collectors from whom the pieces for this exhibition have been drawn. The public collections are: the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, the Geelong Art Gallery, the Hamilton Art Gallery, The Johnston Collection and the National Trust of Victoria. Such an exhibition would not be possible without the generosity of all these people. The Circle would also like to thank The Johnston Collection for their very generous sponsorship in contributing to some of the mounting costs.

Patricia Begg

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FLOWER PAINTING

Flower painting on porcelain has a long history and encompasses the depiction of flowers purely as decorative objects, and the depiction of flowers from the botanical or scientific point of view. The fragile nature and wonderful colours of both flowers and porcelain are in a sense complimentary.

For this exhibition the story commences with the development of hard paste porcelain at Meissen in 1709. In the early 18th century, as the Baroque style waned, Chinoiserie decoration became fashionable and exotic birds and oriental flowers were popular decorative elements in porcelain designs.

The desire for Eastern riches in the form of spices, silks and porcelain led to the formation of the East India Companies of several European nations. There was a fascination with the East and anything associated with the Orient was also linked to the East India Companies and thus described as "Indian". The vogue for Chinoiserie saw Chinese pagodas appearing in English gardens, whilst Chinese styled pavilions became fashionable for the taking of tea by the wealthy classes. Chinese plants were also imported into England at first in very small quantities, but enough to generate enormous interest in the botanical world, as baskets arrived containing magnolias, camellias, peonies, azaleas and other shrubs.

The term Indianische Blumen, which literally means East Indies flowers, refers to a style of floral decoration introduced by Johann Höroldt at Meissen around 1720. It was principally based upon the Japanese Kakiemon style, with Chinese famille verte influences. The name derives from the fact that much Chinese export porcelains were imported into Europe in vessels of the East India Companies.

The style was also used at other European factories, including Chelsea, where the sale catalogues refer to "Indian Plants". The flower sprigs were often conveniently used to cover faults in the glaze or the body. At Lowestoft many of the flower designs were based upon the Oriental style, including the "Redgrave" pattern with its rocks and flowering peonies, while Cookworthy at Plymouth and Bristol made copies of "India Flowers".

The Bow factory also used as decoration the prunus blossom and the peony in soft famille rose colourings. At Bow, a French influence was apparent from about 1755 in the form of tightly bunched "Bow Flowers" painted in soft colours and probably derived from Mennecy.

English eating habits at this time tended to follow the French fashion with the different dishes of each course being arranged symmetrically on the table at the same time. Dessert was considered quite separate from the main meal and consisted of sugared fruit, sweet meats, jams, sugars and cream, all presented on a special dessert service. It was the development of the dessert service which gave additional scope for the painting of fruit and flowers, with Meissen developing a range of naturalistic shapes such as leaves and sun flowers for its dessert services, including dishes with a moulded border imitating the wicker baskets in which fruit was served. It was Meissen porcelain that the English used for their dessert services until early in the second half of the 18th century.

Deutsche Blumen which means German Flowers, was also introduced to Meissen by J G Höroldt, this time around 1740, and the style was derived from engravings of the botanical works of Johann Wilhelm Weinmann. In 1746, Meissen used illustrations from one of Weinmann's works to decorate a dessert service presented to Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the British Ambassador to Saxony whose collection of Meissen was used by Nicholas Sprimont as a source of inspiration for the early Chelsea designs. This service included dishes in the form of artichokes, laurel leaves and sun flowers for this period was characterised by the naturalistic Rococo style which had originated in France.

Naturalistic flowers had actually appeared earlier on Vienna Porcelain between 1725 and 1730, and they were painted in a very beautiful and precise style, however it was the Meissen style of Deutsche Blumen which predominated and many variations of the style occurred. The great period of the Meissen factory continued until the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756, but the Meissen style was extensively copied by other Continental factories such as Vincennes, and English factories such as Worcester, Chelsea and Bow from the 1750s onwards. After the Seven Years War the German influence was in many cases superseded by a French influence.

At Worcester many painters were involved in the painting of decorative but naturalistic flowers, often with their own distinctive styles. As we move into the 1770's and the neo-classicial style emerges, flowers were often draped across gilt edged reserves in colourful garlands or festoons, usually with scale-blue backgrounds. Later in the decade we have the riotous mixture of flowers with spotted fruit, or flowers alongside exotic birds, or the more subdued Hop-Trellis patterns derived from Sèvres, where the flowers are not significant to the design.

As we move through the late 18th century into the early 19th century, we know the names of some of the painters who worked in the naturalistic style, men such as Thomas Baxter and William Pollard who painted on Welsh porcelain, Samuel Astles who worked at Worcester, and Moses Webster who worked at Derby, of whose flowers it was said that they had a "somewhat dashed and faded appearance, as if they had been kept in water too long".

Flower painting was now a very sophisticated art. Although copied from scientific engravings, the flowers were naturalistic but non-botanical. Individual flower types can often be identified, however botanical accuracy was not the aim, the intent being to paint an attractive and decorative bouquet of real or imaginary flowers.

The 18th century was the great age of exploration with the trading companies and explorers bringing back to Europe a myriad of exotic flora and fauna from most parts of the globe. As a result of this climate of discovery and scientific enquiry, the accurate botanical depiction of plants and flowers on porcelain was a natural progression. The first tea service decorated with botanical illustrations was actually made in China during 1750 to 1752 as a gift for the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus.

The first attempt at botanical decoration on the Continent came in 1759-1760, when the Furstenberg factory produced a series of wall tiles depicting polychrome plants for the Duke of Brunswick's technical college, however true botanical porcelain painting appears for the first time in about 1780, on a service made at Tournai decorated with botanically accurate flowers and with the correct botanical inscriptions painted on the back of each piece. The concept of painting botanically accurate individual flowers was an English innovation and the English preoccupation with nature meant that the botanical motif played a much more important role in English porcelain decoration than it did on the Continent, a fact even more true in the 19th century.

The Chelsea factory had a tradition of using naturalistic shapes such as leaves and blossoms as well as partridge tureens etc. and the use of botanical illustration on porcelain was a logical next step. The term "Hans Sloane Flowers" refers to a style of Deutsche Blumen used at Chelsea from 1752 to 1756, however the flowers were much more naturalistic than the Meissen variety. The flowers were inspired by drawings from several publications, including Philip Miller's "Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants" published in 1752. This is often referred to as "The Gardeners' Dictionary". Miller was gardener to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries at their Physick Garden in Chelsea which was under the patronage of Sir Hans Sloane who was a doctor, a collector and a botanist.

Sir Hans Sloane had virtually no direct connection with the style of flower painting named after him, the misnomer coming from an advertisement in the Faulkner's Dublin Journal of July 1758 which referred to ware "enamelled from Sir Hans Sloane's plants".

The person whose name ought to be associated with these Chelsea plates however is George Ehret a German botanical artist who came from Heidelberg and who produced illustrations of the specimens in Sloane's collection. Some of Ehret's designs were used as a basis for some Meissen decoration in the 1740s, and it was his botanical paintings and drawings, complete with butterflies and insects, which the Chelsea decorators used for inspiration.

The Chelsea botanical designs are a far cry from what one expects of 18th century English flower painting as they depict not only exotic flowers, but also common vegetables such as turnips, carrots and swedes, and often the plants had their roots depicted as well, almost as though they were weeds strewn across the plate. To suit their composition, Chelsea artists were not adverse to adding an extra leaf to complete a design, even if it did belong to a different plant species! The attention to detail was remarkable, even reproducing blemishes in the flowers and the leaves.

Chelsea of the Gold Anchor period did not introduce any new style of flower painting but continued the previous style in a more ostentatious manner. It is interesting to note that there are pieces of Chinese export porcelain which closely copy the Chelsea botanical plates but which lack the accuracy. Similar botanical painting occurred at Bow from about 1756 although it was a little cruder than the Chelsea.

The zenith of English botanical painting was reached at Derby in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Even where plants and flowers were used for decorative effect, the botanical element was present in the correct naming of the plant, in English, upon the reverse.

This period also coincided with a change in the nature of dessert which saw a new emphasis on fresh fruits which were now more readily available to the rich due to greenhouse improvements. With the need to serve large quantities of fresh fruit, dessert service shapes became less complicated, with round, oval and shell shaped dishes predominating. Porcelain figure groups previously associated with dessert table decoration now receded into the background as the decorative elements of dessert were concentrated on the dishes themselves, dishes with either landscape, fruit or botanical flower decoration. In England, Worcester and Derby excelled in such dessert services.

The term Billingsley Roses refers to porcelain painted by or in the style of William Billingsley who was apprenticed to the Derby factory in 1774 and who later worked at Pinxton, Mansfield, Worcester, Nantgarw, Swansea and Coalport. As a result of his meanderings, these factories copied his style, which was spread even further by his pupils. By 1784 he commenced to paint in a naturalistic style in which the painting of the flower petals, especially of roses, was done with a full brush in strong colour, the highlights being wiped away with a dry brush leaving behind a faint tinge of colour, a technique much copied in England later. His naturalistic bouquets and borders were painted directly from natural specimens, rather than copying from botanical prints as had previously been the case.

After Billingsley left Derby to go to Pinxton in 1796, flower painting at Derby was carried on by John Brewer and William Pegg. John Brewer continued Billingsley's naturalistic style but he also engaged in botanical painting, using exotic specimens seen in the prints appearing in the "Botanical Magazine" of William Curtis, copies of which were first sent to Derby in 1792 and which remained a source of inspiration until the early 1800s. Another publication by William Curtis was the "Flower Garden Displayed" which depicted 120 plants shown in what was believed to be the chronological order of their arrival in Britain between 1787 and 1807. Several of these illustrations can be found on Derby porcelain of the period.

William Pegg was perhaps the greatest of English botanical painters on porcelain and he arrived at Derby from the Staffordshire potteries in 1796 only to leave in 1800 when he became a Quaker and his religious zeal prevented him from pursuing something as frivolous as flower painting, which he referred to as "lust of the eyes". By 1813 however his fervour had somewhat abated and he came to the conclusion that copying Nature was a reverence for God's creation rather than a sin and he resumed painting at Derby until he finally left the ceramics industry in 1820. Pegg also painted from nature and not from drawings or prints, and his flowers are often life-sized, virtually covering the whole of a plate. Gilding on his plates is very restrained, usually just a thin border, and the fine Derby body afforded him a wonderful surface to decorate. The discovery of Pegg's sketchbooks from the 1813 period has enabled much of his work to be identified. His painting of a humble thistle upon a Derby dish is rightly considered to be one of the finest plant depictions made on porcelain.

The Spode factory in about 1815 manufactured the Lubbock service, where each piece was decorated with two differing botanical specimens, each one especially designed and drawn for its place in the border of the pieces. No plant species was painted more than once and some pieces of the Lubbock service were decorated with Australian flowers.

It was in Vienna however that European botanical painting reached its climax with a whole series of botanical wares being produced after 1800 all based upon a faithful rendering of living plants, and often intended as plaques for wall decoration.

The period of the Rococo Revival from the 1830s onwards continued the tradition of naturalistic flower painting with painters such as Stephen Lawrence and Thomas Dixon working at Coalport. Much of the mundane repetitive work was done by women and girls and the term "Flowers by Women" is one often encountered in the pattern books of all factories. Even when factories employed artists of note, printed outlines were often used for the guidance of painters and the freedom of artistic expression so evident in the 18th century, whether on decorative or botanical porcelain, was thus often stifled by the constraints of the factory pattern book.

John Scarce

THREE RELATED FACTORIES

For perhaps the first time in Australia, outside their permanent home at the Johnston Collection where their collective links have been known for some time, this exhibition includes examples of productions from three distinctly different but related firms. From the earliest concern to the most recent, the three firms are (Ralph) Stevenson and (Augustus Aldborough Lloyd) Williams (Cat. Nos 74 and 90), Samuel Alcock and Company (Cat. Nos. 65 and 73) and Sir James Duke and Nephews (Cat. No. 115).

All are linked through their managers/owners having preceded and/or succeeded one another over a period covering some forty four years. Of the triumvirate, Samuel Alcock and Company (1827 - 59) enjoyed the longest period of production; Stevenson and Williams (1820 - 26) and Sir James Duke and Nephews (1860 - 64), due to dissolution of partnerships and bankruptcy respectively, lasted considerably shorter lengths of time. Despite the brevity of their existences, however, high quality productions were evidently made at these firms.

Stevenson and Williams have also been referred to as Stevenson, Alcock and Williams but examples of their dessert wares of patter number "507" displayed at the City Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent are labelled in the former fashion. At this point it is believed that Samuel Alcock may have been a silent partner responsible for establishing trade links with America.

The majority of wares made at these firms tends not to have been factory marked and research has been progressed through matching (in the instance of Stevenson and Williams) marked Stone China shapes with their unmarked porcelain equivalents. Samuel Alcock's wares are more often than not identified by their pattern numbers. In the case of Sir James Duke and Nephews, the examples shown here (Cat. No. 115) are impressed marked with his hand device mark which was seldom employed and, when used, difficult to see.

The examples included in "Flowers of Fantasy" show a tendency on the part of all three firms to produce innovative shapes and further develop approaches to flower painting in the nineteenth century.

Harry F Blackburn