THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN 
A LARGE FAMILLE ROSE DISH

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A LARGE FAMILLE ROSE DISH
ENCIRCLED YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

Well painted with blossoming branches of prunus bearing shaded pink and ivory flowers and buds issuing from the edge of the foot, spreading along the underside and extending over the rim onto the interior, the gnarled branches realistically rendered in painterly style in bluish-grey, sepia, tan and grisaille and rising in jagged lines echoing the rim of the dish, the trunks entwined with three large loose-petaled orange flowers with peony petals and lotus pod centres, a cluster of auspicious multi-coloured and iron-ed lingzhi growing from a hollow knot of the tree, the delicate tips of the branches picked out in pale lime-green (restored glaze chip on rim)--20in. (50.5cm.) diam.

Lot Essay

The composite flowers painted in iron-red enamels on this example are very unusual and do not appear or any other recorded examples of this type.

For other examples of this Imperial pattern, cf. the only two Yongzheng porcelain dishes of this very large size recorded in the West. See S. W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, pl. XLVIII, for the example in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Illustrated Catalogue of Ch'ing Enamelled Ware in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, no. A839, also illustrated by Beurdeley and Raindre, Qing Porcelain, New York, p. 92, no. 130.

The only other example of this very large size with the complete and fully detailed drawing which has been published to date is in the Palace Museum in Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, pl.51

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