There appears to be no published examples of this exact pattern from the Qianlong period, although it strongly resembles the Yongzheng-marked dish in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, enamelled with yellow bees above sprays of pink roses and blue daisies, included in the Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, and illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 208, no. 105. A related pair of Yongzheng-marked bowls with straight sides and enamelled with a very similar pattern of bees above peonies were sold in our New York Rooms, 3 June 1993, lot 294.

Also compare with two Yongzheng-marked examples from the Palace Museum, Beijing, enamelled in the same format of flowering peonies: the first, a vase with a denser floral design, illustrated in Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong, p. 209, no. 38; the other is a large plate with additional magnolia flowers, op. cit., p. 318, no 147. It is interesting to note that whilst the Beijing example has stippled yellow enamel on the pink peony bloom, on the present bowl the stippling appears on the iron-red bloom.

These floral motifs continued to be favoured in the Qianlong period, cf. a similar combination of large peony flowers with blue and aubergine enamelled daisies decorated within a cartouche of a Qianlong-marked vase in the National Palace Museum, illustrated in Fine Enamelled Ware of the Ch'ing Dynasty: Chien-Lung Period, Part I, p. 56, no. 16.


(US$155,000-190,000)