This group was first begun in April 1737. In his Work Report for that month Kändler gives a detailed description of the group, noting that the ‘noble lady’ is being served coffee by ‘ein Mohr’. He also noted that because this complex group ‘requires so much work there is still something left to do in the following month’.1 His Work Report of July and August that year records that he had finished the group.2 The group was subsequently produced with a number of variations to the attendants. A print source for the group has not been found, but as Vanessa Sigalas notes,3 Kändler would almost certainly have been influenced by French prints which illustrated the French practice of depicting wealthy Europeans of status accompanied by servants of non-European descent.
A very similar group from the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, Basel, is illustrated by Ingelore Menzhausen and Jürgen Karpinski, In Porzellan verzaubert, Basel, 1993, p. 99, along with a variant with the jester Schindler, and another with the servant but without the kneeling suitor. For the example in the Shimmerman Collection which includes Schindler, see Vanessa Sigalas and Meredith Chilton, All Walks of Life, A Journey with The Alan Shimmerman Collection, Meissen Porcelain Figures of the Eighteenth Century, Stuttgart, 2022, cat. no. 119, p. 381, and where the group and its variants of this group are discussed pp. 380-387. For another variant where the kneeling gallant is replaced by a table, see Menzhausen and Jürgen Karpinski, ibid., 1993, p. 98, and Claire Dumortier and Patrick Habets (Ed.), The T&T Collection, Porcelain Pugs, a passion, New Haven and London, 2019, Cat. 87, pp. 118-119 and p. 202 for an example of this variant mounted as a clock.
1. ‘Ein neues Croppgen aufs Waaren Lager angefangen, wie eine Vornehme dame auf einem Visiten Stuhle sitzet und hat eine Coffe dasse in der rechten Hand die lincke aber küßt eine Wohl gebutzte Mannes Persohn, hinter dem Frauenzimmer stehet ein Mohr mit Einem Credenz Teller [Präsentierteller] welcher Serviret. Weiln solches aber sehr viel Mühe hat ist noch was in künfftigen Monath davon zu fertigen übrig blieben', cited by Ulrich Pietsch, Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, Leipzig, 2002, p. 46.
2. Ulrich Pietsch, ibid., 2002, p. 48.
3. Vanessa Sigalas and Meredith Chilton, ibid., 2022, p. 382.