These exceptionally large and elegant earthenware plaques were made by the céramiste Jules Loebnitz, for Maison Pichenot, Paris, in the late nineteenth century, and depict serene, idyllic, and ethereal landscapes centred on a pair of Classical ruins.
Each work shows figures among imagined Classical ruins in a dreamlike landscape, one with a tranquil body of water in the centre beneath a fountain in the shape of a lion, the other a more grand architectural setting set in some sort of hilly or mountainous landscape.
One example is signed illegibly to the lower left, but each plaque is also stamped Maison PICHENOT/J. LOEBNITZ/Successeur/Rue des trois Bornes No. 7/ et Rue Pierre Levee No. 4. Paris, K and numbered 4590 to the reverse. Maison Pichenot was set up in 1833 by Pichenot, who was succeeded as director of the faïencerie by the skilled céramiste Jules Loebnitz in 1857, who did much to advance the use of ceramics in art and the artistic quality of works in earthenware such as these, creating beautiful decorative plaques that often had a Classical architectural theme.