Featured Paintings on tile, huh?

I came across two of these paintings on tile in the same frames, same box that had the civil war yearbook. I took one of them out of the frame to show the paper tag on the back, I can do it for the other if needed. The first with the boys is still dirty but seems to be signed on the front.

Size of tiles is 4-3/4" by 3", so not really miniatures but pretty small. They seem to be hand painted paintings and not prints or prints enhanced with paint though I don't have experience with these tiles so unsure. Images look victorian era to me. Who has seen things like this, age, etc and how to find similar? I looked on images and ebay with "antique tile painting italy" and didn't see anything very similar.

 

Spanish maybe? Second word looks like Murillo.

 

Wow, that's it. So 19th or early 20th century reproductions of two famous 17th century works by Murillo: Two Boys Eating a Melon and Grapes, and The Little Fruit-Seller. But they do seem to be hand painted and not prints. Presumably by the first name before the /Murillo. I guess I need to check the other one to see if the first name is the same; not that it probably matters. Any other thoughts on tile paintings?

 

I think based on the paintings of Esteban Murillo.

 

For sure, the painting names I gave are his paintings that are being reproduced: see here for the originals: https://www.wikiart.org/en/bartolome-esteban-murillo/

 

Not tiles - porcelain plaques. They could very well be hand painted, and these can be very collectable. For that size, I'd call them miniatures.

 

The stickers reads "OE & G" which would make them Austrian. KPM produced plaques with the same subject (which you can find with a Google Image search.)

Debora

 

What they said. I think the tiles were partially printed and finished off by hand.

 

Possible, I considered that, but I don't think so. For one thing I would have thought they would start with a better reproduction of the original painting, if they were going to mass produce them. Or that there should be others? But clearly I'll need to look more carefully.

Debora - Nice, I didn't see that at all. Maybe just E&G? But do you have any idea what that could stand for? Is that a company?

Here is the back of the other one. This one by Fraubenesser(?) so not the same artist.

Both have the same embossed number, 318, so I guess that was for the porcelain blank.

 

OE & G = Oscar and Edgar Gutherz, according to the internet.

Debora

 

The first line is the work's title and the second line is the artist's name (Murillo.) Geldzählerin translates to "Money Counter" and Traubenesserin to "Grape Eater" in English.

Debora

 

I did a google search on “porcelain plaque impressed 318”. I found a number of plaques similar to yours. Various paper labels were present along with gallery labels. As far as I could see, none of those plaques were attributed to a specific maker.

 

Here are Murillo examples of KPM. One is a duplicate of yours.

https://www.1stdibs.com/en-gb/furni...porcelain-plaques-after-murillo/id-f_1643412/

Debora

 

Did you notice on the OP’s plaque, they only painted the shadow of the stick by the kid’s foot. No stick! Oops!

 

OE & G dates are 1899 to 1918 and they were based in Bohemia (not Austria.)

Debora

 

Sorry. Stick? You'll have to point it out to me.

Debora

 

In the lower left of the KPM version and the original painting there is a branch with a shadow. In the posters version it looks like there is only the shadow. I believe there is a leaf missing too. I was thinking that over the years they may have been using previous tiles as an example and slowly some of the detail got left out.

 

You have much better eyes than I!

Debora

 

I know that most Pratt ware pot lids changed slightly when they were re-insured .