A PAIR OF CHINESE-EXPORT REVERSE MIRROR PAINTINGS-ON-GLASS

18TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF CHINESE-EXPORT REVERSE MIRROR PAINTINGS-ON-GLASS
18th Century
Each with a bevelled rectangular plate, one painted with a mother feeding her baby midst ruins below leafy trees, a cock, hen and their young standing in the foreground; the other painted with a young lady elegantly clad in a blue robe and red coat with fur-lined collar and hat, reclining against a flowering tree, with three sheep and a small dog in the foreground; both in a later Italian concave-moulded giltwood frame with foliate corners
32¾ in. x 23 in. (83 cm.x 58.5 cm.) including frame (2)

Lot Essay

Chinese mirror and glass paintings were produced during the 18th and early 19th Centuries purely for export to the West, their decoration deriving in some degree from European engravings. Painted upon plates of glass, the painting was executed on the back of the glass, a technique which was known in the 18th Century as 'back-painting'. Many of the paintings were produced in Canton, a centre for painting on glass (M. Jourdain and R. Soame Jenyns, Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century, Norwich, 1967, p. 36).

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