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Lot Essay
Exceptional Qing Enamelled Porcelains from the Stuart Collection
Rosemary Scott, Independent Scholar
The assemblage of Chinese porcelains collected by Alan and Jackie Stuart is characterised by rarity and fine quality, reflecting the scholarly and aesthetic approach of the collectors. The current sale includes very fine examples of Song and Ming ceramics, as well as excellent monochromes and blue and white decorated porcelains from the Qing dynasty. This short essay will, however, concentrate on five rare enamelled porcelains from the reigns of the three great Qing emperors – Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-35), and Qianlong (1736-95) – during whose reigns imperial Chinese enamelled porcelain undoubtedly reached new heights.
The imperial interest in enamels demonstrated by the Kangxi Emperor was a major spur to the production of both new enamel colours and new styles of enamel painting on fine porcelains during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Colours, primarily refined from those in use during the Shunzhi reign (1644-1661), but with the eventual addition of cobalt blue enamel, were employed to produce a new type of delicate and finely-painted design in the first half of the Kangxi reign. These enamels, which included a range of greens, are often referred to in the West as famille verte. They were transparent enamels, with the exception of the iron red, iron brown, and black, which were opaque. These famille verte enamels can be seen painted with great delicacy and skill on the hexagonal jardinière from the Stuart Collection (lot 624). The Daoist figures in landscape depicted on this jardinière admirably demonstrate the Kangxi ceramic decorators’ ability to create features such as texture in the ground plane, and the appearance of patterns and folds in textiles, by applying fine black dots and lines underneath transparent enamel colours.
The Stuart jardinière additionally includes a very rare feature, which is also seen on one of the famous Kangxi famille verte bowls in the collection of Sir Percival David (PDF 859). While Daoist figures, such as Xiwangmu -the Queen Mother of the West, are traditionally accompanied by spotted deer, the creatures pulling a cart containing flowers and fungus on the David bowl and pulling the chariot on the Stuart jardinière, are clearly not spotted deer. They have shaggy, single-coloured coats, long, full tails, and large paws - in contrast to the dainty cloven hoofs of the spotted deer depicted elsewhere on both vessels. The unusual animals on the Stuart and David pieces appear lupine, and this is emphasised on the David bowl by large canine teeth and fierce expression. The creature on the Stuart jardinière does not appear so fierce, and has pricked, rather than flat ears, but nevertheless has a distinctively wolf-like body, coat, and tail, as well as large paws.
The fine famille verte enamels created in the Kangxi reign were also applied to a new style of a revived decorative technique. This was the so-called doucai technique, which had flourished in the Ming dynasty Chenghua reign (1465-87), but had largely been abandoned thereafter. This technique involved the application of fine blue outlines, applied to the unfired clay before glazing. After glazing, enamel colours were applied on top of the glaze, within the outlines. As the fine outlines were applied to the unfired, porous clay, any mistakes in painting could not be remedied – resulting in wastage. Like all enamelled porcelains, the doucai pieces also had to be fired twice, and some pieces would fail in each firing – resulting in more wastage. Doucai was therefore an expensive type of decoration, even for the imperial kilns. In the Kangxi reign, however, it was enthusiastically revived and new motifs and styles were adopted, along with a somewhat wider range of enamel colours. The designs on Ming dynasty doucai porcelains had been primarily formal, but in the Kangxi reign the designs became both more naturalistic and often more complex.
The Kangxi doucai dish in the current sale (lot 625) is a rare example, which bears a handsome, and very effective, rendering of a complex landscape inspired by painting on silk or paper, or by the fine woodblock printed illustrations which also flourished in this reign period. Both the interior base and the cavetto of the dish bear well-painted river scenes of a type more usually associated with porcelains decorated solely in underglaze blue. It incorporates, a tranquil river, high cliffs, distant mountains, varied trees, and floating red clouds, as well as pavilions, a bridge, a fishing boat, and three small figures. The ceramic decorator has incorporated the various green enamels with great skill, and it is worth noting that the dark green enamel was specifically created using a base enamel, the composition of which had been altered in order to allow additional copper colorant to be used without compromising the melting point shared with the other enamels.
Appreciation of the doucai technique, and the development of further decorative styles to be applied in conjunction with it, continued into the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods. A rare and spectacular Yongzheng doucai meiping vase from the Stuart Collection is included in the current sale (lot 627). This large vase, with smoothly rounded shoulders and an elegantly tapering foot, is decorated with a powerful imperial five-clawed dragon and a delicate, open-winged phoenix, both surrounded by blossoming peonies on scrolling stems. This particular decorative theme takes its inspiration from Yuan dynasty mid-14th century porcelains decorated in underglaze blue. While dragons are rarely depicted amongst flowers on Yuan dynasty porcelains, a phoenix and a qilin are shown amongst floral scrolls on the side of a large 14th century blue and white flask illustrated by Zhu Yuping in Yuandai qinghua ci, Shanghai, 2000, p. 141, fig. 6-18. Phoenixes can also be seen amongst peony scrolls on the shoulder of a Yuan blue and white meiping illustrated in the same publication, pp. 216-7, figs. 8-41a-c, while a phoenix with outstretched wings is also seen ascending amongst floral scrolls on a Yuan blue and white ewer, also in the same publication, p 107, fig. 4-22.
On the Stuart Yongzheng doucai meiping, the brilliantly coloured peony blooms and the bright red smaller leaves on the scrolling stems provide an effective counterpoint to the large creatures, which represent the emperor, in the case of the dragon, and the empress, in the case of the phoenix. The design is also well formulated in that the dragon – despite rearing its ferocious head – is shown descending, while the phoenix flies upwards. Interestingly, when this design was continued on a Qianlong doucai meiping, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (see The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 259, no. 237), some of the dynamism of the Yongzheng example was lost, as the Qianlong vessel displays both dragon and phoenix travelling more or less horizontally, while they are less visibly striking for being closely surrounded by dense scrolling.
A truly magnificent Qianlong doucai vessel from the Stuart Collection is included in the current sale (lot 626). This is a massive moon flask decorated with an imperial five-clawed dragon rising from turbulent waves and facing the viewer with all four limbs outstretched in powerful splendour. The dragon is surrounded by multi-coloured clouds. This particular motif was greatly appreciated by the Qianlong Emperor, and can be seen on items in various media made for his court. Three versions of the design appear on very rare doucai moon flasks created at the imperial kilns during his reign. On a much smaller Qianlong doucai flask (height: 24.3 cm.) in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (see The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 263, no. 241) two five-clawed dragons are shown – a red one descending and a green one ascending on either side of a flaming pearl – above waves and amongst multi-coloured clouds. Another version can be seen on a Qianlong doucai flask, of similar large size to the Stuart flask, which was sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in May 2023, lot 2903. (Fig. 1) The Hong Kong flask bears a similar red dragon to that on the Stuart flask, but it is accompanied by a considerably smaller green dragon, possibly representing the heir apparent, which appears to be taking instruction from the larger red dragon. A further similarly-sized large Qianlong doucai flask in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (illustrated The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, op. cit., p. 278, no. 254) is also similar in design to the Stuart flask, but on the Beijing vessel a very small green dragon can just be seen rising from the water below the red dragon. It may be argued that the single dragon on the Stuart flask is the most effective as a design, as it allows the creature to fill the circular space, and the body of the dragon to be shown surrounding a gilded flaming pearl.
The three large flasks – the Palace Museum flask, the flask sold in Hong Kong, and the Stuart flask all share similarly complex handles joining their necks and shoulders. These are formed of scrolling archaistic dragons decorated in iron red and gilding. These handles, with their complex reticulation, would have been difficult for the potter to make and fire successfully, and, in fact, these large moon flasks overall would have presented the potters with considerable challenges, due to their size and weight, and the fact that they stand on relatively small flared feet.
Towards the end of the Kangxi reign a new palette of enamel colours was produced, and these colours, which are known in the West as famille rose were perfected in the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns. The new colours included rose pink, which owed its colour to colloidal gold, opaque white, opaque yellow, and a glossy black enamel. The pink enamel together with a clear blue enamel, which had appeared in the latter years of the Kangxi reign, could also be combined to provide a new clear purple. The new colours could be used to provide pastel tones and also shading using the fact that they did not run in firing. Ceramic decorators could not only to paint all these enamels in a delicate manner, but could apply them thinly or thickly as the decorated desired. A particularly handsome example of Qianlong famille rose decoration can be seen on the large and rare so-called ‘hundred deer’ vase from the Stuart Collection in the current sale (lot 632).
The bold shape of this vase is based on metal hu vessels of the Bronze Age, but with the addition of archaistic dragon handles on either side. The large size and smooth shape of this form provided a perfect ‘canvas’ for the ceramic decorator, and the whole surface is painted with a continuous rocky and tree-strewn idyllic landscape, in which sika deer roam at will. Such vases are known as ‘hundred deer’ or ‘hundred blessings’ – ‘hundred’ simply implying an abundance, and deer providing a rebus for ‘blessings’. A hundred deer 百 鹿 bai lu suggests the wish 受天百祿 shoutian bailu ‘May you receive a hundred blessings from heaven’.
The new enamel colours allowed the ceramic decorator scope to incorporate many subtle elements in the design – pink and white peaches (symbolising long life), and multi-coloured lingzhi fungus (symbolising immortality) for example, as well as white deer. The inclusion of white deer amongst the brown and russet animals, was significant, since the word for white in Chinese is bai 白 – a homophone for the word for a hundred. Another rebus for a hundred is provided by the inclusion of cypress trees in the design, since the name for cypress in Chinese is also bai 柏. The theme of ‘a hundred deer’ was one of which the Qianlong Emperor was very fond, and which was incorporated into various art forms in his reign, but is perhaps seen at its most sumptuous on vessels such as this famille rose vase.
Rosemary Scott, Independent Scholar
The assemblage of Chinese porcelains collected by Alan and Jackie Stuart is characterised by rarity and fine quality, reflecting the scholarly and aesthetic approach of the collectors. The current sale includes very fine examples of Song and Ming ceramics, as well as excellent monochromes and blue and white decorated porcelains from the Qing dynasty. This short essay will, however, concentrate on five rare enamelled porcelains from the reigns of the three great Qing emperors – Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-35), and Qianlong (1736-95) – during whose reigns imperial Chinese enamelled porcelain undoubtedly reached new heights.
The imperial interest in enamels demonstrated by the Kangxi Emperor was a major spur to the production of both new enamel colours and new styles of enamel painting on fine porcelains during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Colours, primarily refined from those in use during the Shunzhi reign (1644-1661), but with the eventual addition of cobalt blue enamel, were employed to produce a new type of delicate and finely-painted design in the first half of the Kangxi reign. These enamels, which included a range of greens, are often referred to in the West as famille verte. They were transparent enamels, with the exception of the iron red, iron brown, and black, which were opaque. These famille verte enamels can be seen painted with great delicacy and skill on the hexagonal jardinière from the Stuart Collection (lot 624). The Daoist figures in landscape depicted on this jardinière admirably demonstrate the Kangxi ceramic decorators’ ability to create features such as texture in the ground plane, and the appearance of patterns and folds in textiles, by applying fine black dots and lines underneath transparent enamel colours.
The Stuart jardinière additionally includes a very rare feature, which is also seen on one of the famous Kangxi famille verte bowls in the collection of Sir Percival David (PDF 859). While Daoist figures, such as Xiwangmu -the Queen Mother of the West, are traditionally accompanied by spotted deer, the creatures pulling a cart containing flowers and fungus on the David bowl and pulling the chariot on the Stuart jardinière, are clearly not spotted deer. They have shaggy, single-coloured coats, long, full tails, and large paws - in contrast to the dainty cloven hoofs of the spotted deer depicted elsewhere on both vessels. The unusual animals on the Stuart and David pieces appear lupine, and this is emphasised on the David bowl by large canine teeth and fierce expression. The creature on the Stuart jardinière does not appear so fierce, and has pricked, rather than flat ears, but nevertheless has a distinctively wolf-like body, coat, and tail, as well as large paws.
The fine famille verte enamels created in the Kangxi reign were also applied to a new style of a revived decorative technique. This was the so-called doucai technique, which had flourished in the Ming dynasty Chenghua reign (1465-87), but had largely been abandoned thereafter. This technique involved the application of fine blue outlines, applied to the unfired clay before glazing. After glazing, enamel colours were applied on top of the glaze, within the outlines. As the fine outlines were applied to the unfired, porous clay, any mistakes in painting could not be remedied – resulting in wastage. Like all enamelled porcelains, the doucai pieces also had to be fired twice, and some pieces would fail in each firing – resulting in more wastage. Doucai was therefore an expensive type of decoration, even for the imperial kilns. In the Kangxi reign, however, it was enthusiastically revived and new motifs and styles were adopted, along with a somewhat wider range of enamel colours. The designs on Ming dynasty doucai porcelains had been primarily formal, but in the Kangxi reign the designs became both more naturalistic and often more complex.
The Kangxi doucai dish in the current sale (lot 625) is a rare example, which bears a handsome, and very effective, rendering of a complex landscape inspired by painting on silk or paper, or by the fine woodblock printed illustrations which also flourished in this reign period. Both the interior base and the cavetto of the dish bear well-painted river scenes of a type more usually associated with porcelains decorated solely in underglaze blue. It incorporates, a tranquil river, high cliffs, distant mountains, varied trees, and floating red clouds, as well as pavilions, a bridge, a fishing boat, and three small figures. The ceramic decorator has incorporated the various green enamels with great skill, and it is worth noting that the dark green enamel was specifically created using a base enamel, the composition of which had been altered in order to allow additional copper colorant to be used without compromising the melting point shared with the other enamels.
Appreciation of the doucai technique, and the development of further decorative styles to be applied in conjunction with it, continued into the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods. A rare and spectacular Yongzheng doucai meiping vase from the Stuart Collection is included in the current sale (lot 627). This large vase, with smoothly rounded shoulders and an elegantly tapering foot, is decorated with a powerful imperial five-clawed dragon and a delicate, open-winged phoenix, both surrounded by blossoming peonies on scrolling stems. This particular decorative theme takes its inspiration from Yuan dynasty mid-14th century porcelains decorated in underglaze blue. While dragons are rarely depicted amongst flowers on Yuan dynasty porcelains, a phoenix and a qilin are shown amongst floral scrolls on the side of a large 14th century blue and white flask illustrated by Zhu Yuping in Yuandai qinghua ci, Shanghai, 2000, p. 141, fig. 6-18. Phoenixes can also be seen amongst peony scrolls on the shoulder of a Yuan blue and white meiping illustrated in the same publication, pp. 216-7, figs. 8-41a-c, while a phoenix with outstretched wings is also seen ascending amongst floral scrolls on a Yuan blue and white ewer, also in the same publication, p 107, fig. 4-22.
On the Stuart Yongzheng doucai meiping, the brilliantly coloured peony blooms and the bright red smaller leaves on the scrolling stems provide an effective counterpoint to the large creatures, which represent the emperor, in the case of the dragon, and the empress, in the case of the phoenix. The design is also well formulated in that the dragon – despite rearing its ferocious head – is shown descending, while the phoenix flies upwards. Interestingly, when this design was continued on a Qianlong doucai meiping, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (see The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 259, no. 237), some of the dynamism of the Yongzheng example was lost, as the Qianlong vessel displays both dragon and phoenix travelling more or less horizontally, while they are less visibly striking for being closely surrounded by dense scrolling.
A truly magnificent Qianlong doucai vessel from the Stuart Collection is included in the current sale (lot 626). This is a massive moon flask decorated with an imperial five-clawed dragon rising from turbulent waves and facing the viewer with all four limbs outstretched in powerful splendour. The dragon is surrounded by multi-coloured clouds. This particular motif was greatly appreciated by the Qianlong Emperor, and can be seen on items in various media made for his court. Three versions of the design appear on very rare doucai moon flasks created at the imperial kilns during his reign. On a much smaller Qianlong doucai flask (height: 24.3 cm.) in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (see The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 263, no. 241) two five-clawed dragons are shown – a red one descending and a green one ascending on either side of a flaming pearl – above waves and amongst multi-coloured clouds. Another version can be seen on a Qianlong doucai flask, of similar large size to the Stuart flask, which was sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in May 2023, lot 2903. (Fig. 1) The Hong Kong flask bears a similar red dragon to that on the Stuart flask, but it is accompanied by a considerably smaller green dragon, possibly representing the heir apparent, which appears to be taking instruction from the larger red dragon. A further similarly-sized large Qianlong doucai flask in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (illustrated The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum, vol. 38, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, op. cit., p. 278, no. 254) is also similar in design to the Stuart flask, but on the Beijing vessel a very small green dragon can just be seen rising from the water below the red dragon. It may be argued that the single dragon on the Stuart flask is the most effective as a design, as it allows the creature to fill the circular space, and the body of the dragon to be shown surrounding a gilded flaming pearl.
The three large flasks – the Palace Museum flask, the flask sold in Hong Kong, and the Stuart flask all share similarly complex handles joining their necks and shoulders. These are formed of scrolling archaistic dragons decorated in iron red and gilding. These handles, with their complex reticulation, would have been difficult for the potter to make and fire successfully, and, in fact, these large moon flasks overall would have presented the potters with considerable challenges, due to their size and weight, and the fact that they stand on relatively small flared feet.
Towards the end of the Kangxi reign a new palette of enamel colours was produced, and these colours, which are known in the West as famille rose were perfected in the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns. The new colours included rose pink, which owed its colour to colloidal gold, opaque white, opaque yellow, and a glossy black enamel. The pink enamel together with a clear blue enamel, which had appeared in the latter years of the Kangxi reign, could also be combined to provide a new clear purple. The new colours could be used to provide pastel tones and also shading using the fact that they did not run in firing. Ceramic decorators could not only to paint all these enamels in a delicate manner, but could apply them thinly or thickly as the decorated desired. A particularly handsome example of Qianlong famille rose decoration can be seen on the large and rare so-called ‘hundred deer’ vase from the Stuart Collection in the current sale (lot 632).
The bold shape of this vase is based on metal hu vessels of the Bronze Age, but with the addition of archaistic dragon handles on either side. The large size and smooth shape of this form provided a perfect ‘canvas’ for the ceramic decorator, and the whole surface is painted with a continuous rocky and tree-strewn idyllic landscape, in which sika deer roam at will. Such vases are known as ‘hundred deer’ or ‘hundred blessings’ – ‘hundred’ simply implying an abundance, and deer providing a rebus for ‘blessings’. A hundred deer 百 鹿 bai lu suggests the wish 受天百祿 shoutian bailu ‘May you receive a hundred blessings from heaven’.
The new enamel colours allowed the ceramic decorator scope to incorporate many subtle elements in the design – pink and white peaches (symbolising long life), and multi-coloured lingzhi fungus (symbolising immortality) for example, as well as white deer. The inclusion of white deer amongst the brown and russet animals, was significant, since the word for white in Chinese is bai 白 – a homophone for the word for a hundred. Another rebus for a hundred is provided by the inclusion of cypress trees in the design, since the name for cypress in Chinese is also bai 柏. The theme of ‘a hundred deer’ was one of which the Qianlong Emperor was very fond, and which was incorporated into various art forms in his reign, but is perhaps seen at its most sumptuous on vessels such as this famille rose vase.