A very rare and important pair of polychrome figures of rampant horses, Arnhem faience, attributed to the factory of Johan van Kerckhoff, circa 1760-1770

Footnotes

Provenance:
Wintergerst Collection, Esslingen, Germany;
Fischer-Böhler Collection, Munich (paper collectors label to the base);
With Aronson Antiquairs, Amsterdam, where purchased by the present owner

Literature:
Mitteilungsblatt der Keramikfreunde der Schweiz, 30/31, March 1955, pl. 1, ill. 3;
Aronson Antiquairs, 2004, pp. 148-149, no. 170;
Hans Ressing, "Een kleine veestapel, Dierfiguren uit de Arnhemse fabriek van Johan van Kerckhoff," Vormen uit vuur, 193, 2005/4, pp. 31- 36, plate. 5;
J. Ressing-Wolfert et. al., Arnhemse faience, een Europees avontuur, 2008, p. 124, cat.no. 146, and again p.185, cat.no. 125

Exhibited:
Schloss Jegenstorf, Bern, Das Tier in der Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts, Summer 1952;
Museum voor de Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhemse faience (1759 – ca. 1770) : een Europees avontuur, 16 Feburary-25 May 2008

In 1759 Johan van Kerckhoff and his business partner Samuel Jacob Hanau started a faience factory in Arnhem staffed partly with German workers. Faience made in Arnhem is amongst the rarest in Dutch faience or "Delftware." Only around 200 pieces of Arnhem faience are known today, the vast majority tablewares, most in public collections. It is revered for its rarity and quality alike. That such a standard of production was achieved in Arnhem is remarkable, as the city, situated on the Rhine river around 100 kilometers from Amsterdam, at that time counted no more than 8000 inhabitants. As Ressink-Wolfert (op.cit. p.10) has pointed out, the city was thus small, meaning that there was not a single notary and no newspaper in circulation in the city. It is therefore not surprising to see the advertisement for its products appear in the newspaper the Amsterdamsche Courant of 28 May 1764, which mentions the diversity of shapes the Arnhem factory produced. "Alle zoorten van Arnhems Aardewerk, zo best als gemeen, na de Saxische, Fransche en Engelsche Trant, bestaande in Fontijnen, Tafel Serviesen, Beeltjes, Gevogelten, Vrugten, Terrines, Koffykannen, Thee Potten,..." [At Jan Bezoet, on the N.Zijds Achterburgwal, near the Lynbaanssteeg, is for sale a wide variety of Arnhem earthenware, generally after the Saxon, English and French examples, including fountains, table services, figure groups, birds, fruit, tureens, coffee pots, teapots, tasting pots, spittoons as well as chargers, plates, and everything else a factory here in this country would make, after the newest fashion and at the lowest prices, to be sold as retail or sent in dozen]. (Ressing-Wolfert, op.cit., p. 205 and p.31, ill.22). In the inventory of contents of the possessions of Samuel Jacob Hanau of 1769, there is mention of three horses, blue and white, placed on a marble table in the entrée of the house, likely the most representative room of the house.

Most faience we now know is Arnhem was previously attributed to German faience factories. Hans Erdner and Gert K. Nagel attributed the model to Schrezheim, and also mentioned these examples from the Fischer-Böhler collection ((Die Fayencefabrik zu Schrezheim, 1752-1865, Ellwangen/Jagst, 1972, plate 38). The attribution to Arnhem as a place of manufacture is now widely accepted based on, amongst others, a pivotal publication by Hans Ressing entitled "Een kleine veestapel, Dierfiguren uit de Arnhemse fabriek van Johan van Kerckhoff," Vormen uit Vuur, 193, 2005/4, pp. 31- 36. A fourth pair is in the collection of the Museen der Stadt Aschaffenburg, Schlossmuseum der Stadt im Schloss Johannisburg, Germany. Mr and Mrs Ressink's subsequent seminal publication on the subject formed the basis of the ground-breaking exhibition Arnhemse Faience, een Europees avontuur, which brought together 120 pieces of Arnhem faience. In their catalogue, they list all the known pieces by this rare factory, which includes, besides the present horses, one other pair with magenta hooves (included in this sale), two single rampant horses in a private collections, a pair in magenta colours in the Museen der Stadt Aschaffenburg, Schlossmuseum (inv.nos. F238-239), and two brown coloured pairs, one in a private collection and the other on loan to the Gemeente Musea Delft/Museum Lambert van Meerten (erstwhile), inv. nr. B17-5-I-II. It is likely that the artistic source for the pair of horses was a 17th-century bronze sculpture of a rearing horse produced by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), a pupil of Giambologna, for King Philip IV, now on the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid, Spain.