A WELL-PAINTED FAMILLE NOIRE YENYEN VASE

QING CERAMICS

Details

A WELL-PAINTED FAMILLE NOIRE YENYEN VASE
KANGXI

Both the baluster body and the trumpet-shaped neck decorated with yellow and mauve birds in flight or perched in flowering prunus trees with white blossoms and mauve trunks within a landscape of bamboo and green and pale turquoise rocks, the two scenes separated by a band of foliate scroll at the base of the neck, all reserved on a lustrous black ground applied over a green glaze, the mouth rim and interior glazed white, with an artemesia leaf in underglaze blue within a double circle on the base
22 1/8in. (56.2cm.) high

Literature

The Tsui Museum of Art, Chinese Ceramics IV, Hong Kong, 1995, no. 107

Lot Essay

The design and fine quality of painting on this vase are very similar to that found on a larger baluster vase (27½in. high) in the Salting Collection illustrated by Gorer and Blacker, Chinese Porcelain and Hardstones, vol. I, London, 1911, pl. 10. Besides the subject matter both vases have a very similar foliate band encircling the base of the neck and the birds on each are executed in yellow and green. Compare, also, the similar style of painting and subject matter found on another famille noire vase of different shape and size in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by Suzanne Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989 ed., p. 225, no. 218

Previously sold in these rooms, June 3, 1988, lot 294