A Rare Painted Enamel 'European Subject' Pouring Vessel

QIANLONG FOUR-CHARACTER MARK IN BLUE ENAMEL WITHIN A DOUBLE SQUARE AND OF THE PERIOD

細節

A Rare Painted Enamel 'European Subject' Pouring Vessel
Qianlong Four-Character Mark in Blue Enamel within a Double Square and of the Period
The pear-shaped body raised on an oval foot, each side finely painted with a vignette of a European woman and a child in a landscape setting, within a shaped cartouche of scrolling leaves and separated by two small shaped landscape panels executed in puce grisaille, all surrounded by foliate scroll on a yellow ground, below a border of key fret and a formal foliate band reserved on a dense pattern of feathery scrolls painted in yellowish green below the tapering mouth rim, the interior enameled turquoise
5¾in. (14.6cm.) high

展覽

London, Christie's, Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 2 - 14 June 1993, no. 107.

拍品專文

An Imperial quality enamel-on-copper vase of this kind shows very clearly the interest in foreign peoples at the highest level of Chinese court society, and also the way in which the Imperial workshop painters were able to turn their hands to copying specifically Western prints or painting sources onto vessels sent to them for decoration. The fineness of the painting as well as the subject of women and young children in landscape settings with Western-inspired buildings in the background within a foliate reserve is typical of these types of small wares, which includes a small vase of zhadou shape, illustrated in the Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Qing Dynasty Painted Enamels, Taipei, 1979, no. 139. See, also, those included in the Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, Taipei, 1992, nos. 131, 135 and 144.