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Lot Essay
One of the strengths of the J & J Collection is an important group of bottles decorated in delicate famille rose enamels produced by Imperial ateliers established at the court in Beijing. This exemplary bottle is certainly among the masterpieces of this group and reflects the Imperial interest in European enamels and subject matter. Depictions of plump ladies and cherubic children loosely clad in clothing with a mass of folds painted with a combination of sapphire-blue, ruby-red and rich orange yellow enamel finds its exact counterpart in French and Swiss enamels of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
By the reign of the Emperor Qianlong, between 1736 and the 1750s, the Palace enamelling workshops had reached their peak in mastering the manufacture and painting of enamels on metal, porcelain and glass. A combination of intense Imperial interest, the fruits of the Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperors' contributions to enamelling in the various media, and proliferation of both Court artists and Jesuit missionaries involved in designing and painting the wares, resulted in a short zenith for the art. The present example likely dates from the early Qianlong period.
An artistic device used by Palace enamellers throughout the Qianlong period was stippling: the gradation of shade or color by applying a mass of tiny dots. Technically, this allowed for wide variation in intensity of color without constantly changing the saturation of the enamel. The alternative was to use different washes so that the intensity of the enamel was diluted. The present bottle is predominantly stippled to produce shading and chiaroscuro.
There is an enameled copper bottle of similar subject still in the Imperial Collection in Taiwan which is likely by the same designer or enameller as the present bottle. See Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Museum, no. 14. Another Qianlong-marked enameled copper 'European-subject' bottle also possibly by the same hand and with similar border decoration reserved on a dark aubergine ground is in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum and illustrated by M. C. Hughes, The Blair Bequest, p. 257, no. 356.
By the reign of the Emperor Qianlong, between 1736 and the 1750s, the Palace enamelling workshops had reached their peak in mastering the manufacture and painting of enamels on metal, porcelain and glass. A combination of intense Imperial interest, the fruits of the Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperors' contributions to enamelling in the various media, and proliferation of both Court artists and Jesuit missionaries involved in designing and painting the wares, resulted in a short zenith for the art. The present example likely dates from the early Qianlong period.
An artistic device used by Palace enamellers throughout the Qianlong period was stippling: the gradation of shade or color by applying a mass of tiny dots. Technically, this allowed for wide variation in intensity of color without constantly changing the saturation of the enamel. The alternative was to use different washes so that the intensity of the enamel was diluted. The present bottle is predominantly stippled to produce shading and chiaroscuro.
There is an enameled copper bottle of similar subject still in the Imperial Collection in Taiwan which is likely by the same designer or enameller as the present bottle. See Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Museum, no. 14. Another Qianlong-marked enameled copper 'European-subject' bottle also possibly by the same hand and with similar border decoration reserved on a dark aubergine ground is in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum and illustrated by M. C. Hughes, The Blair Bequest, p. 257, no. 356.