Enchanting & Historical Berlin KPM Porcelain Plaque “Children Eating Grapes & A Melon” After Spanish Master Painter Murillo, Circa 1900

From Berlin, KPM (Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur) was the Royal porcelain factory in Germany from the mid 18th century onward.  This enchanting KPM porcelain is after an oil painting on canvas by one of the most important 17th century Spanish masters, Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). The artist created a series of genre paintings, with good-natured humor, documenting Sevillian street life. The main characters of these works are children, touching depictions of street urchins, beggars, and flower girls were likely commissioned by itinerant Flemish merchants who frequented the city. While this subject matter might have been familiar to viewers in the Protestant Dutch Republic, it was boldly revolutionary in Catholic Spain.

This beautiful rendering of the artist’s original oil painting is of two Seville street children eating fruit. The painter shows child beggars and poverty in Seville, at that time one of the most important and commercial cities in Spain and Portugal, that had a large number of homeless people, compounded by the ravages of plague and the deep economic and social crisis.

KPM had an entire department in the 19th century dedicated to copying “Old master ” & German paintings onto porcelain and these would become extremely popular, high quality, ceramic paintings among the growing consumer class. The bigger the plaque, the more technically complex it was to produce, and so the more valuable it was.

This genre painting is an important historical work which goes beyond the “religious themed ” paintings of the time, showing Murillo’s knowledge of the Italian school and especially Caravaggio’s theatrical dynamism of chiaroscuro (light and dark) with a difference : the careful observation of everyday life. The relief gold guilt frame surround is in very good condition. The porcelain plaque is in excellent condition and impressed with the KPM monogram and sceptre mark, circa 1900.

Dimensions: Image: height 10″ x width 7.5″   Frame: height 16″ x width 13.5″