Lot 143
143
A FINE FAMILLE ROSE PRONK 'DOCTER'S VISIT' MILK-JUG AND COVER after the design by the Dutch draughtsman Cornelis Pronk, painted with three figures seated around a low table bearing a blue and white dish, wearing blue, pink and yellow robes, the central figure apparently holding a fish, and a fourth figure with a bald head wearing a simple brown robe standing behind them pointing at an exotic bird perched on a flowering branch, a peacock perched on a lattice fence, all above a stripy snake slithering through long grasses between two storks on a terrace, the foot and C-scroll handle with a pale green scales-pattern band, the slightly domed cover with a central quatrefoil panel with trellis-pattern reserved with florettes all within a similar band at the rim, surmounted with an aubergine knop finial (top of finial slightly flaked), circa 1737

Details
A FINE FAMILLE ROSE PRONK 'DOCTER'S VISIT' MILK-JUG AND COVER after the design by the Dutch draughtsman Cornelis Pronk, painted with three figures seated around a low table bearing a blue and white dish, wearing blue, pink and yellow robes, the central figure apparently holding a fish, and a fourth figure with a bald head wearing a simple brown robe standing behind them pointing at an exotic bird perched on a flowering branch, a peacock perched on a lattice fence, all above a stripy snake slithering through long grasses between two storks on a terrace, the foot and C-scroll handle with a pale green scales-pattern band, the slightly domed cover with a central quatrefoil panel with trellis-pattern reserved with florettes all within a similar band at the rim, surmounted with an aubergine knop finial (top of finial slightly flaked), circa 1737
14cm. high

Lot Essay

The subject appears on a number of other forms including an urn and cover illustrated by Howard and Ayers, op.cit., vol. I, p.294 and reproduced by Jorg, op.cit. p.27, a bottle from the Hague, Gemeente Museum, illustrated on the front cover of Jorg, op.cit., 1980; and an other formely in the C.T. Loo Collection, illustrated by Beurdeley, op.cit., cat.125

Commissioned in 1735, 'The Docter's Visit' is the second design drawn by Cornelis Pronk for the Dutch East India Company, the first being 'La Dame au Parasol' in 1734. The expense of transferring the subject onto Porcelain in Canton limited their initial order to only five dinner services and 54 mantelpiece sets, although another comprising 10 dinner-services, 10 tea-services, and 20 vases with basins, was placed in 1738. The first order was carried to The Netherlands on the Hogersmilde at the end of 1738, followed by the second order in the next year. A simplified version of the design, which excludes the standing man, was sent to Canton in 1739; cf. Jorg, op.cit., p.29, fig.8.

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