A Meissen porcelain cloche (Wärmeglocke) from a service reputedly made for King Frederick the Great, c.1750-65, painted with two landscape vignettes, one with a dog, the other with a monkey, each partially enclosed by ribbon-tied garlands of deutsche Blumen below and at the sides, a lemon finial above, within a waved brown line rim, 32.5cm wideProvenance: King Frederick the Great, Berlin (by repute). Part of the service presented by the German National Socialist Government to William Randolph Hearst, sold as part of the dispersal of the Hearst Collection by Gimbels, New York, 1941. Paula de Koenigsberg Collection, Buenos Aires. Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 28 November 1977, lot 96. Property of the late Hugo Morley-Fletcher MA FSA (1940-2022).Exhibited: Possibly part of the service pieces exhibited in Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, (lent by de Koenigsberg), 1945. Possibly part of the service pieces exhibited in Buenos Aires, Museo Municipal de Arte Hispano Americano, (lent by de Koenigsberg), 1947.Note: When the service was dispersed at Christie’s in 1977 the introductory text for the service in the sale catalogue stated that it was made for Frederick the Great. The true origin of the service, and whether it was made for the Prussian king is still unclear. In November 1762, Frederick the Great is known to have ordered another service with animals from Meissen during his occupation of Dresden (see Rainer Rückert, Meissner Porzellan, Munich, 1966, no. 472, pl. 117), but this 'Japanese Service' is very different. The present lot was one of fifty-eight pieces sold by Christie’s on 28th November 1977, lots 88-119. A pair of plates from the same service, which were not a part of the 1977 sale group, were sold at Christie’s on 5th July 2004, lot 69, and a large dish, also not part of the 1977 group, was sold at Christie’s on 13th November 2018, lot 321. A service with closely related decoration was given by King Augustus III to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British Envoy to the Saxon Court, in 1747. Many pieces from the service, along with a variety of engraved sources, are illustrated by T.H. Clarke in two articles, 'Das Northumberland-service aus Meissener Porzellan', in Keramos, October 1975, no. 70, pp. 9-91, and 'Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and the Chelsea Factory' in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, 1988, Vol. 13, part 2, pp. 110-120, where Clarke mounted a convincing argument that what has come to be known as the ‘Northumberland Service’, now in the possession of the Dukes of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, is in fact the majority of the service given to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams by Augustus III. The ‘Northumberland Service’ included 20 cloches, or Wärmeglocke, round and oval (T.H. Clarke, ibid., 1975, p. 78 and p. 82.), which were designed to keep food warm on dishes under them, and these dishes may have been pewter, rather than porcelain (T.H. Clarke, ibid., 1975, p. 81.). On the ‘Northumberland Service’ the finials are formed as birds, whereas the two cloches from this service in the 1977 sale group both have fruit finials. The specimen birds decorating the ‘Northumberland Service’ were taken from engraved illustrations in the first volume of Eleazar Albin's Natural History of Birds, published in three volumes from 1731 to 1738 (and acquired by Meissen in 1745), whereas the graphic source for the birds on the 1977 sale group is currently unknown. In the 1977 sale catalogue, components of the service were dated variously between 1745 and 1765, and some pieces bore the crossed swords and dot marks, suggesting a date after 1763. The flower decoration is of a slightly later type than the ‘Northumberland Service’. Stylistically, it seems probable that the service dates to the 1750s, and if this was the case, the pieces with crossed swords and dot marks were later supplements. Alternatively, the entire service may have been decorated in about 1765, using some earlier pieces which hadn’t yet been decorated.Condition Report: Broken through and re-stuck.