A SUPERBLY DECORATED VERY RARE IMPERIAL YELLOW-GROUND FAMILLE ROSE DISH

Details
A SUPERBLY DECORATED VERY RARE IMPERIAL YELLOW-GROUND FAMILLE ROSE DISH
BLUE ENAMEL YONGZHENG FOUR-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN A DOUBLE SQUARE AND OF THE PERIOD

The thinly potted dish finely enamelled with a pair of magpies, one perched on leafy bamboo, the other on ornamental rocks before flowering rose bushes and multicoloured daisies, the reverse with a fourteen character poetic inscription which may be translated as "The verdant bamboo stems extend ever upward; the branches fill the eternal spring with their fragrance" and three iron-red seals reading Xiangcai, Bingran and Junzi, all reserved on an opaque lemon-yellow ground (rim chip restuck with associated hairline, tiny chip to rim)
6 7/8 in. (17.4 cm.) diam.
Sale room notice
Please note the four-character Yongzheng mark of this present lot is not the one illustrated in the catalogue.

Lot Essay

No other dish with this subject is published. The quality of the painting is among some of the finest work of the Yongzheng period produced in the Palace Workshop.

Cf. a bowl decorated with roses, bamboo and rocks inscribed with an identical poem and seals to the present dish included in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, 1992, Catalogue, no. 54.

The present dish belongs to a small group of dishes enamelled at the Palace workshop with rocks and flowers opposite poetic inscriptions reserved on lemon-yellow grounds. Several examples in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, are illustrated in op. cit., no. 75 and 84 with lingzhi, orchids and craggy rocks; no. 76 with orchids and rocks; and no. 83 and 87 with plum blossoms and bamboo respectively.

Compare also with another two dishes in the Freer Gallery of Art, one with a flowering prunus branch with pink and white blooms reserved on a lime-green ground illustrated by Moss, By Imperial Command, pl. 59; see also ibid., pl. 57 for another enamelled with bamboo reserved on a pink ground.

The decorative motif on the present dish compares most closely to that on a teapot in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, op. cit., pl. 31, with a pair of magpies perched on a bamboo stalk and on blue ornamental rocks by flowering rose bushes. Two other bowls in the same exhibition are decorated with birds and flowers, op. cit., pl. 35, with a pair of magpies perched on bamboo stalks; and pl. 25, with a flock of doves within a bamboo grove and rose bushes.

(US$70,000-90,000)

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