Girl with garland of flowers

When the fine arts take Nature as their model, her true cultivation is as a garden – artist turns gardener! The French sculptor Michel Victor Acier (1736 –1799) spent his life searching for just such ideals. He’s sure to have also discussed the matter at length with the Saxon painter Johann Eleazar Zeissig, who adopted the pseudonym of Schenau (1737 –1806). They both studied at the Paris Art Academy and their paths again crossed at the MEISSEN® Manufactory. Whilst Acier was placed on an equal footing with the modeller Johann Joachim Kaendler, Schenau became Director of the Meissen School of Drawing and taught at the Dresden Art Academy. The two artists oversaw the ascendancy of a form of Classicism very much in the French vein at MEISSEN®. These two gardening children, modelled by Acier in 1777 to source material by Schenau, are being issued to mark the 275th anniversary of Acier’s birth.