A VERY RARE LARGE 'EUROPEAN-SUBJECT' CANTON ENAMEL PANEL

CIRCA 1755

Details

A VERY RARE LARGE 'EUROPEAN-SUBJECT' CANTON ENAMEL PANEL
circa 1755
Finely worked in repouss and enamelled in the famille rose palette with stippled details depicting elegant European ladies and children in brightly coloured robes, promenading and in conversation accompanied by two dogs on a shoreside terrace surrounded by trees and Neo-Classical buildings, the right foreground with apparently a Greek scholar writing on a tablet held by an eager young male student, the middle ground with a boat setting sail from a palace with other ships in the distance, small restorations
48 in. x 28 in. (122 cm. x 71 cm.), framed

Provenance

Mrs. J. Clifford Roscoe, Tadcaster, Yorkshire

Literature

R. Soame Jenyns and William Watson, Chinese Art, The Minor Arts, vol.I, London, 1963, no.112

Lot Essay

This extraordinary panel was probably produced in Guangzhou (Canton) as tribute for the Imperial summer palace, the Yuanmingyuan. This panel would have been one of several to have adorned the European rooms created under the supervision of Jesuit missionaries for the Emperor Qianlong between 1747 and 1759. The Summer Palace was destroyed by fire in 1860, and only four other panels of this large size and style are recorded. One, with very similar composition to the present lot, was exhibited A Tale of Three Cities, Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, London, 1997, Catalogue, no.201, p.156; and also illustrated by Jan Wirgin, Fran Kina till Europa, 1998, no.262, p.245. A second panel, depicting a music party, was exhibited, Europa und die Kaiser von China, Berlin, 1985, Catalogue, no5. A pair of panels with vertical compositions in the Gugong (Palace Museum, Beijing) and converted into large screens, was exhibited, La Cit interdite, Muse du Petit Palais, Paris, 1996/7, Catalogue, nos. 115 and 116.

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