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Lot Essay
The present bottle is one of the masterpieces of the group of Beijing enamelled bottles from the Palace workshops, and exhibits the total technical control and artistic genius of the early-Qianlong period enamellers at their height.
An artistic device used by Palace enamellers throughout the Qianlong period was stippling: the gradation of shade or colour by applying a mass of tiny dots. Technically, this allowed for wide variation in intensity of colour without constantly changing the saturation of the enamel. The alternative was to use different washes so that the intensity of the enamel was diluted as watercolours might be diluted. The present bottle is predominantly stippled to produce shading and the effect of chiaroscuro.
Although a European subject is depicted on the bottle, the three goats formed a popular Chinese rebus and suggest the probability that Chinese artists soon learned to invent their own locally significant European subjects after having mastered the genre of 17th- and 18th-century European pastoral scenes. The style itself, of plump ladies and children loosely clad in clothing with a mass of folds painted with a combination of sapphire-blue, ruby-red and a rich orange-yellow enamel finds its exact counterpart in French and Swiss enamels of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The combination of European subject-matter and Chinese auspicious iconography is delightful. The lady and boy seated among flowers with a country mansion set in a pasture in the background form a distinctly European scene. The three goats are in keeping with the European scene, but are also an auspicious Chinese motif related both to the sun and to male children, and providing a rebus for san yang kai tai, the opening up of new growth in spring, which in turn symbolises happiness and good fortune.
A similarly decorated snuff bottle is illustrated by Li Yinghao, Baozhi Biyanhu, Liaoning, 2000, p. 101. Compare also several related Beijing enamel 'European-subject' bottles of comparable outstanding quality, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Snuff Bottles - The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, nos. 164-167. The decorative theme also appears on a Qianlong enamelled box in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, 1992, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 73.
An artistic device used by Palace enamellers throughout the Qianlong period was stippling: the gradation of shade or colour by applying a mass of tiny dots. Technically, this allowed for wide variation in intensity of colour without constantly changing the saturation of the enamel. The alternative was to use different washes so that the intensity of the enamel was diluted as watercolours might be diluted. The present bottle is predominantly stippled to produce shading and the effect of chiaroscuro.
Although a European subject is depicted on the bottle, the three goats formed a popular Chinese rebus and suggest the probability that Chinese artists soon learned to invent their own locally significant European subjects after having mastered the genre of 17th- and 18th-century European pastoral scenes. The style itself, of plump ladies and children loosely clad in clothing with a mass of folds painted with a combination of sapphire-blue, ruby-red and a rich orange-yellow enamel finds its exact counterpart in French and Swiss enamels of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The combination of European subject-matter and Chinese auspicious iconography is delightful. The lady and boy seated among flowers with a country mansion set in a pasture in the background form a distinctly European scene. The three goats are in keeping with the European scene, but are also an auspicious Chinese motif related both to the sun and to male children, and providing a rebus for san yang kai tai, the opening up of new growth in spring, which in turn symbolises happiness and good fortune.
A similarly decorated snuff bottle is illustrated by Li Yinghao, Baozhi Biyanhu, Liaoning, 2000, p. 101. Compare also several related Beijing enamel 'European-subject' bottles of comparable outstanding quality, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Snuff Bottles - The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, nos. 164-167. The decorative theme also appears on a Qianlong enamelled box in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, 1992, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 73.