Behold the goat and its rider, the tailor to Count Heinrich von Brühl, in all their flashy glory and excess. Both goat and tailor convey an irrepressible, overly confident swagger. The tailor wears a black hat (cocked just so), a sumptuous white coat with a lavish floral waistcoat, and a measuring ruler that dangles near his waist. A pair of glasses known as a pince-nez completes the look. Like its rider, the shaggy goat dons glasses while also sporting tools central to the tailor’s profession: a gray iron hangs from one of its horns; scissors (partially visible here) hang from the other; a pincushion sits perched on its rump.
When compared to the history of equestrian portraits that featured nobility and other elite figures on horseback in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the satirical bite of this porcelain work becomes more apparent. Instead of an elegantly rearing horse fit for a king, a common goat too small for an artisan. Instead of stirrups, the tailor’s boots and spurs drag along the ground. The figure of Count Brühl’s tailor stems from an eighteenth-century model by Johann-Joachim Kändler (1706–1775), a renowned modeler at the Meissen porcelain manufactory. Established in 1710 by King Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and a fervent collector of porcelain, the Meissen manufactory became celebrated for the virtuosity of their porcelain, a type of precious ceramic with translucent properties that originated in China and had long been exported from Asia to Europe for centuries. Eventually, the Meissen manufactory was run by Count Brühl, one of the most powerful and well-dressed ministers of that time. Portrayed as a figure of ridicule, perhaps Count Brühl’s tailor has the last laugh today: Porcelain, but make it fashion.
