At Sotheby's London auction, Johann Joachim Kandler's work sold for £818,500

KOLKATA: A recent auction, at Sotheby's London, saw an exceptionally rare, life-size Meissen monkey recently rediscovered as an early work by the innovative porcelain sculptor Johann Joachim Kandler, sold for more than twice its high estimate, achieving £818,500 against an estimate of £200,000-400,000.

Bidding for this prized work was intense, with four international buyers vying for the monkey, before it was won by a private collector over the telephone. The work was the highlight of the Collection of Sir Gawaine and Lady Baillie, the greatest group of 18th Century Meissen animals and birds in private hands. In total, the sale achieved £4.03 million - more than double expectations.

Depicted taking snuff, the monkey was commissioned by Augustus II, the strong, Prince Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and displayed in his porcelain menagerie at the famous Japanese Palace in Dresden.

Olive, Lady Baillie, purchased the figure at Sotheby's in London in 1947 for her home in Nassau, Bahamas. The monkey, which was passed to her son, Sir Gawaine, in the 1960s, its illustrious provenance becoming forgotten and the fine details of its modelling obscured by later restoration, has been recently authenticated by the leading Meissen authority, Professor Ulrich Pietsch, as an original 1732 work.

Presently, only two other examples are known - one in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the other in the Dresden State Art Collections.