Vienna 1782 - 1863 Vienna

From 1800 to 1843 Nigg worked as a flower painter for the Viennese porcelain factory. From 1835 this post also involved holding classes in painting at the factory. A publication of 1818, marking the centenary of the founding of the factory, praised in particular Nigg’s ‘ability to work in the style of the masters of his speciality, such as Huysums, Ruysch, and others’. With the advent of the Biedermeier Era, flower painting became immensely popular and was also to be found on large porcelain plaques. A piece of this sort, thirty inches in height, was presented by Nigg, on behalf of the Viennese factory, at the London World Exhibition of 1851.

Nigg was probably the most important porcelain painter then active in Vienna. His work constituted the simultaneous continuation and adaptation of Dutch floral still-life painting, which in Vienna had been taken up by Waldmüller and others. These plaques are also among the most technically brilliant pieces of porcelain to be produced in Vienna. They were especially favoured as gifts in diplomatic circles and they found their way into the art collections of the time. The fact that there was a special class for instruction in flower painting at the Viennese porcelain factory testifies to the importance that this genre assumed, especially in the Biedermeier Era. Pupils seeking to practise this discipline had to draw from nature. Mastery was deemed to consist not only in perfecting the purely technical skills required to fire such large items, but also in achieving refinement in the nuances of colour.