Limited Masterworks Wall Painting Fascinating Underwater World

The underwater world of the tropics is home to innumerable plants, fish, mammals and other engaging ocean dwellers. Meissen porcelain painter Detlef Ritter has been applying himself artistically to the rich assets of this self-contained universe for quite some time now. His latest wall plate captures a great deal of what so colourfully transpires in a realm to which we humans usually remain utterly oblivious.

Ritter has managed with his wall plate to pay captivating tribute to a submerged natural world as gorgeous as it is delicate. Marine angelfish and surgeonfish, groupers and day octopus mill around above a colourful carpet of coral. A green sea turtle drifts past like some silent primeval onlooker, a golden sun seemingly drawing it upwards. This is a subaquatic tropical realm drenched in sunlight, differing angles of incident light causing the beautifully suffused colour to vary mercurially from yellow to blue so as to yield a truly dazzling backdrop. Framing the proceedings is a green border into which various examples of the marine life depicted have also spilled over.

Our porcelain painter has perpetuated a great manufactory tradition with his wall plate. Oil paintings have been recreated on porcelain and preserved for all eternity in this way ever since the 18th century. In the intervening period, a succession of both Meissen painters have been inspired by historical sources, their day-to-day observations or their own imaginations to produce superlative art on Meissen porcelain.