A FINE AND LARGE FAMILLE ROSE PEAR-SHAPED VASE

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

Details

A FINE AND LARGE FAMILLE ROSE PEAR-SHAPED VASE
YONGZHENG/EARLY QIANLONG

Finely painted and detailed with a Daoist scene depicting Xi Wangmu seated on a rocky promontory beneath the crossed feather fans held by two young maidens framed within a rocky grotto, with seven further maidens holding offerings of various 'auspicious' objects, including a large peach, standing in attendance to one side below an immortal carrying a stolen peach branch hiding amidst the rocks while two groups of figures stand below, one group comprising the Eight Daoist Immortals borne atop the waves of a sea, while Liuhai standing atop his three-legged toad is borne towards the scene on a vaporous, blue cloud, the other group comprising five sages holding scrolls, all amidst rocks executed in a painterly style in grisaille, and with Shoulao seated on a crane in flight above the entire scene
25½in. (64.8cm.) high, wood stand

Provenance

Li Hung Zhang, Viceroy of China
Hu Sin Yang, Hangzhou
Alfred Trepnell, Bournemouth, England, no. 150
S. Gorer & Son, London
General Brayton Ives

Literature

Gorer and Blacker, Chinese Porcelain and Hardstones, vol. II, London, 1911, col. pl. 215

Lot Essay

For other famille rose vases of similar shape with cup-shaped mouths and wide bodies see Ernst Zimmerman, Chinesisches Porzellan, Leipzig, 1923, p. 140, and Kangxi.Yongzheng.Qianlong, Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Taipei, 1989, p. 214, fig. 43. A less finely painted example of similar shape with Daoist immortals around the body is illustrated by W. G. Gulland in Chinese Porcelain, London, 1948, vol. I, no. 326; and another vase of globular shape, with Daoist immortals amidst waves, is also illustrated by Gulland, ibid., vol. II, no. 657