Still Life with fruit

Vienna porcelain plaque decorated with a polychrome still life. The painting depicts a marble ledge upon which rests a bunch of white grapes with the vine attached, three peaches in a pyramid at the centre and a cut melon on the right. Black grapes feature at the top alongside two dark plums and hazelnuts lie under the peaches. A snail crawls up the bevelled edge of the marble, and several insects crawl across the fruit. The plaque is finished with a leaf-moulded gilt bronze frame.

Josef Nigg (1782-1863), the father of the painter Alois Nigg, studied under Johann Drechsler at the Academy in Vienna. From 1800 to 1843 he was employed as a flower painter at Vienna's porcelain factory, and from 1835 he also taught painting there. A large painting of flowers on a porcelain plaque thirty inches in height, was presented by Nigg on behalf of the Viennese factory, at the Great Exhibition of 1851.