A RARE MASSIVE FAMILLE-ROSE SGRAFFIATO RUBY-GROUND BALUSTER VASE

QIANLONG/JIAQING PERIOD (1736-1820)

Details

A RARE MASSIVE FAMILLE-ROSE SGRAFFIATO RUBY-GROUND BALUSTER VASE
QIANLONG/JIAQING PERIOD (1736-1820)
Painted with two quadrilobed panels, one framing a processesion of the Eight Immortals in a landscape beneath pine trees, led by Li Tieguai holding his double gourd from which emerges four iron-red bats amidst clouds, the other framing a procession of scholars, immortals and meiren in a landscape beneath magnolia trees, all reserved on a ruby sgraffiato ground interspersed with lotus and other leafy floral sprays between borders of ruyi heads above and petal lappets below, the design similarly repeated on the tapered neck decorated with bats suspending chimes and lotus blossoms suspending endless knots and twin fish, the neck flanked by a pair of molded kui dragon handles beneath the slightly everted rim, the interior and base glazed turquoise
29½ in. (75 cm.) high

Provenance

William Gruber.

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Lot Essay

A famille rose vase of similar shape, and also of impressively large size (78.7 cm.), dated to the 18th century, Qianlong period, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is illustrated by S.G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989 ed., p. 267, pl. 276. Like the present vase, it is decorated on one side of the body with a shaped panel enclosing the Eight Daoist Immortals, with the addition of Xiwangmu descending on a phoenix from above. It, too, has scrolled dragon handles, but unlike the present vase it has additional figural panels on the neck, and the ground on which the panels are reserved is mille fleurs, not sgraffiato.

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