CIRCA 1739

Details

A pair of famille rose Pronk 'Arbour' plates
Circa 1739
Finely enamelled to the central roundel with a lady sitting in a garden pavilion with two attending servants and three children in the foreground by a pond with ducks, the well and rim painted with twelve shaped fruit, flower and insect panels reserved on a green trellis-pattern ground interspersed with shell motifs in iron-red, minute frits, one plate speckled
23.2 cm. diam. (2)

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Lot Essay

This design made by Cornelis Pronk in 1737 was the fourth and last drawing he made for the Dutch East India Company; it was sent to Batavia by the Heeren XVII in 1738 and received in Canton in 1739. See C.J.A. Jörg, Pronk Porcelain, pp.34-37 for a discussion on this design; fig.11, colour pl.X and cat.no.50 for a similar example in the Groninger Museum. Jörg explains that the earlier designs are reported to have 'proved quite expensive and for this reason they did not dare to have the whole quantity made as had been requested'. It was probably for this reason that this design was only made in underglaze-blue and white and in famille rose enamels.
Similar dishes are illustrated by D. Howard & J. Ayers, China for the West, London, 1978, vol.I, p.301, no.295.

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