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Lot Essay
This particular robust hu form with gilt and iron-red decorated dragon scroll handles is usually seen decorated with the 'hundred deer' motif. See The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - Porcelains with Cloisonne Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999, pp. 98-9, no. 85.
Only one other hu of this form and size with similar decoration of figures and pavilions set amidst trees in a mountainous landscape, in the Umezawa Gallery, Japan, appears to have been published. See Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, 1976, p. 356, no. 1071.
As the decoration on these two vases is so unusual, it is possible that they are depicting specific places and may have been inspired by paintings, such as two discussed and illustrated by Bo Gyllensvärd, 'Two Chinese Topographic Paintings in the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm', B.M.F.E.A., No. 50, Stockholm, 1978, pp. 127-62. The two handscrolls are listed as entering the Drottningholm Collection in 1777, but imported to Sweden before that. One is a long river landscape of the area of Ho Yang at Huang-ho and dated to 1619. The other (now mounted as an album) depicts the Pearl river from Bocca Tigris up to Canton and further west. This painting can be dated before 1743.
Only one other hu of this form and size with similar decoration of figures and pavilions set amidst trees in a mountainous landscape, in the Umezawa Gallery, Japan, appears to have been published. See Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, 1976, p. 356, no. 1071.
As the decoration on these two vases is so unusual, it is possible that they are depicting specific places and may have been inspired by paintings, such as two discussed and illustrated by Bo Gyllensvärd, 'Two Chinese Topographic Paintings in the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm', B.M.F.E.A., No. 50, Stockholm, 1978, pp. 127-62. The two handscrolls are listed as entering the Drottningholm Collection in 1777, but imported to Sweden before that. One is a long river landscape of the area of Ho Yang at Huang-ho and dated to 1619. The other (now mounted as an album) depicts the Pearl river from Bocca Tigris up to Canton and further west. This painting can be dated before 1743.