A RARE PAINTED ENAMEL EUROPEAN SUBJECT PEAR-SHAPED VASE

Details

A RARE PAINTED ENAMEL EUROPEAN SUBJECT PEAR-SHAPED VASE
QIANLONG FOUR-CHARACTER MARK IN BLUE ENAMEL WITHIN A DOUBLE SQUARE AND OF THE PERIOD

Finely painted, with two quartrefoil panels of Europeans in landscape settings with European towns in the backgrounds, one depicting a young male traveler wearing a black hat and a pink cloak conversing with a young woman carrying a basket of flowers over her shoulder, the other showing a woman smelling a rose while seated beneath a tree as a young servant brings her a tray of fruit, each within a raised border and separated by smaller quartrefoil reserves executed in puce grisaille framed by blue foliate scroll borders, all reserved against a brown field densely decorated with composite foliate scroll below a band of dragon-filled petal lappets, with further petal lappet bands in gilt-metal above and below, the spreading foot encircled by realistic flowers including lotus, peony, chrysanthemum, roses, asters and lily reserved on an egg yolk-yellow ground, a similar band enriched with double-gourd and grape vines repeated on the upper neck above a band of pink chilong clambering amidst scrolling green tendrils on a yellow ground set between gilt-metal borders of lotus and peony sprays and flanked by a pair of archaistic bird scroll handles, interior in turquoise enamel, some restoration
10¼in. (26cm.) high

Provenance

Stephen Junkunc III

Further details

See illustration of two views

Lot Essay

A very similar vase, possibly the pair to the present example, with different European figural vignettes, was sold in our London rooms, April 7, 1981, lot 271. Compare, also, the painted enamel gold vase decorated with European figural scenes reserved on a foliate ground in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated by R. Soame Jenyns and William Watson, Chinese Art II, New York, 1980, p. 171, no. 124