Featured Help with Painted Porcelain Portrait Plaque

Jus got this lovely painted porcelain portrait plaque. Measures about 7 inches. No markings other than K4 on the back. Interesting is that the frame backing is made from an old cigar box. Any idea who or where this was made?

 

Very nice indeedy

I'd think German, when I saw the k, I thought kpm quality

Think the plaque might just have been bought as a blank, so Mark not linked to the paintwork

But super work

 

same basic image ...
https://www.etsy.com/listing/245084134/victorian-brooch-whitby-jet-painted

https://www.morninggloryjewelry.com...et-brooch-with-a-painted-porcelain-miniature/

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-...-painted-plaque-of-shepherd-811a-c-d9d1342020

There seems to be a shepherd boy genre of painting ...
https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&...HcdkDpsQjJkEegQIFxAC&biw=1450&bih=692&dpr=1.1

 

Seems like kpm did produce tyrolean boy plaques

https://www.auctionsappraisers.com/...n-plaque-19th-c.-young-tyrolean-bo_2DB45CDAF9

But yours is superior even

 

Stunning

 

Lovely.

Debora

 

SUPERB!!!!! @vitry-le-francois, if you go to your very LAST image and hold down the CTL key (on windows/ CMD on MAC) and scroll forward.....to make the eyes of your boy larger.....do you think HIS right eye (on the left side of the screen) might have a tiny signature under the pupil in the white of the eye??? The other eye looks pretty normal.....just wonderin'





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@Aquitaine Yes, it reads, "Made in China"

LOL....I will look with my jewelry loop tomorrow

 

That does look KPM quality.

 

This is the most exquisite example of the porcelain miniature Tyrolean boy I've ever seen.
It is not a portrait as such, but a fashonable subject, just like the Greek girl, also called Gypsy girl, German country people, etc.
Anything 'ethnic' and 'peasant-y' that appealed to people in smog-filled bustling cities, and made them dream of a clean and authentic rural life. A form of escapism.

 

It's very nice, but I'm unconvinced it's KPM quality. The example shown in @Roaring20s third link is identified as KPM on that site. They are either both from the same source material, or the one is a copy of the other, but either way, imo, the one identified as KPM is better painted.

 

Agree, even better, and more expressive.
KPM painted plaques always have wonderful depth and expression.

 

Sorry to say but I disagree that this is a high quality portrait painting. Vitry's is a copy of something else, which appears to be a copy of something else. The shoulder and hands and subtle details on all of the skin in general on Vitry's are absent by comparison with example and a 7" size is large enough to get plenty of definition into the skin. I feel it would be ornately painted at 7", especially if this were truly an older porcelain painting.

The eyes are messed up. The left side eye is somewhat walleyed and bulges unevenly across the face. The right side eye carunkle (sp? the little inner part) was painted "off" in several directions, the white of the eye should not be bulging into it, this is not the angle of the face which is nearly head on. I don't see much for eyelashes despite the appearance of hair on the head, tho this is not as important as the rest of the offness. Despite an almost total absence of light highlights in the dark eyes, there is plenty of light on the skin of the face, so the lack of highlighting in the eyes appears to be an error of omission, as though not completely finished.

I believe this was recently factory painted in an Asian country where people's eyes are not the same as European people's eyes, then the porcelain oval inserted into the old setting with the cigar box. I still have those same old 5c cigar boxes in use in my home, they're 1960s. Even the K4 on the back looks modern made. Am pretty sure there is a market for oval faked porcelain paintings.

I also want to mention that on the example MOS has shown, I'm not sure the one on the right is any more "original" than the one on the left. MOS is correct to mention that the one on the right is better painted, it is. Thank you MOS

 

I see what you mean....

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...tenknabe_in_der_römischen_Compagna_(1857).jpg

Leopold Pollak (1806-1880): Shepherd boy playing the flute in the Roman Compagna (1857)

 

You found the source! Bravo!

 

AJ, I mean no disrespect to say "Asian country" - what I meant is Oriental people are born with slanted eyes, unlike European eyes which are rounder, and they may be less familiar with painting such.

Now I have some hangup about how to describe oriental slit style eyes in a non-derogatory fashion.
Ah well, I mean no disrespect. Political Correctness isn't easy to describe.

 

I know you didn't. But that's not what I meant.

There are round eyes in East Asia too, like the girl I posted, who was born with big, nearly round eyes. And East Asian people have been in contact with 'rounder-eyed' people from India and the Malay world for thousands of years. So they are familiar with different eye shapes.
And as you see, Richard Gere has narrow eyes, as have many people of European descent.

Epicanthic fold, the skin fold that starts over the inner corner of the eye. It also occurs in non-East Asian people. And to complicate matters, it doesn't occur in all East Asian people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicanthic_fold

Or slanted eyes, if they actually are slanted.
But eye shapes have nothing to do with how people copy paintings. If people with an epicanthic fold, whatever their origin, see more rounded eyes on an original, they paint more rounded eyes on the copy.
In this case we don't know who painted the plaque, or if they had an epicanthic fold, all we know is that they were European.

 

A slight error in the spelling on the site, it should be Campagna, with an a. Further down they spelled it right: "A little shepherd playing the oboe at the Claudia Aqueduct on the Roman Campagna".
So he is from Lazio, not Tyrole, but what did those Austrian and German porcelain painters know.