Footnotes

The model for this group was commissioned by Nora Noëmi Allatini, née Meyer Cohen (1889-1954), the daughter of a Berlin banker, who in 1910 married an Englishman and moved to England in 1919. The plaster model was exhibited at the Autumn 1917 exhibition of the Berlin Secession (and published in Die Kunst 37 (1918), reproduced by J. Rafael, Paul Scheurich: Die Porzellangruppe "Dame mit Mohr", in Keramos 149, 1995, pp.53-68, ill. 2). The Meissen manufactory was not able to purchase the model because it had been privately commissioned and this was one of the main reasons that Meissen entered into a contract with Scheurich in 1918.

Nora Allatini did permit the Meissen manufactory to make three examples of the group in 1918: one for her, one for the Schauhalle at the manufactory, and one for Scheurich himself. Allatini received her example in March 1919 shortly before her departure for England. It is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, one of several works by Scheurich that Allatini (Mrs Bobbins, following her second marriage in 1927) bequeathed to the museum in 1954. The second example, for the manufactory Schauhalle, was taken to the Soviet Union after the war and is presumed lost. The group that was probably Paul Scheurich's own example, and likely ended up in Max Adolf Pfeiffer's private possession, was the one in the Prof. J. Rafael Collection, sold in these rooms, 14 April 2022, lot 22.

In April 1927, Pfeiffer wrote to Nora Bobbins to ask her to relinquish ownership of the model so that the manufactory could purchase it from Scheurich, who had been incapacitated by illness and mostly unable to work since August 1923. Bobbins agreed to sell the model for RM 3,000, while Scheurich received half the amount, and the manufactory was finally able to produce the group for sale to the public in two different painted versions. Despite being quite expensive compared to Scheurich's other figures and groups (RM 340 and RM 360), the group was a success and thirteen had been sold by the end of 1931.