This is from a small group of designs by Jean Guillaume George Krüger (1728–1791) intended to be used by the goldsmiths who created snuffboxes for Friedrich II ‘the Great’, King of Prussia (1712–1786).

Krüger was born in London. In 1753, when resident in Paris, he was summoned to Berlin where he remained for about twenty years. By 1774 he was back in Paris, where he exhibited an enamel at the Académie de Saint-Luc. In 1781, possibly as a result of his daughter Marianne marrying François Claude Théremin, then resident in Berlin, he returned to the Prussian capital where he remained until his death ten years later. Writing in 1786, Jean Pierre Erman (1735–1814) and Pierre Chrétien Frédéric Reclam (1741–1789) noted of the career and work of Krüger, ‘He has not worked with any master, but with his superior

knowledge of drawing and having a very distinct natural talent for painting, he developed his own style’, further adding that he was ‘one of the greatest masters of enamel painting’. Examples of Krüger’s work as an enameller include a snuffbox in the Wallace Collection, London, circa 1755–1760, and another snuffbox dating from the end of his career, sold Sotheby’s, Geneva, 16 November 1999, lot 54.

Friedrich II of Prussia owned a substantial collection of snuffboxes. Research in the accounts of the privy purse, Schatullen-Rechungen, by Paul Seidel revealed payments for some 125 snuffboxes that had been acquired by the monarch between 9 January 1742 and 11 December 1775; an inventory made at Sans Souci, Friedrich’s palace in Potsdam, following his death in 1786 listed 119 diamond-set snuffboxes and one other of gold. Friedrich’s enthusiasm for these magnificent works extended beyond simple personal gratification to a greater concern for the well-being of the state. Erman and Reclam explained: ‘The late king, who had a lively and cultivated taste for all the arts and who felt strongly how much their culture serves to ensure the prosperity and glory of the nation, spared no effort to supply craftsmen with the means to practise and without which their skills would have waned; he stimulated their labour and encouraged their inventiveness by the interest he showed in their work and by the truly royal generosity with which he paid them.’

In their account Erman and Reclam went on to explain the king’s personal involvement with the creation of these snuffboxes: ‘he summoned to Potsdam the craftsmen he employed, discussed their skills with them, supplied drawings and corrected theirs with the taste of a connoisseur, giving directions and encouraging them to modify their production’. In light of this observation it is interesting to speculate about the degree of influence the king exerted upon Krüger in the realisation of the present design. The process of adapting the airy watercolour studies to become a jewelled work of art can be understood by comparing a surviving snuffbox with its preparatory study. Numerous jewellers supplied these snuffboxes, among them Christian Ludwig Gotzkowsky, the brothers André and Jean Louis Jordan, the widow of Louis Buyrette, Peter Bianco of Breslau and Philipp Colliveaux.

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