Page 34 - Christie;es Marchant January 18 2018

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A PAIR OF ‘PETER THE GREAT’ PLATES
QIANLONG PERIOD, MID-18TH CENTURY
Showing Peter the Great on his famous
1697-8 trip to study Dutch shipping within
a bianco-sopra-bianco border
52
9 in. (22.9 cm.) diameter (2)
$4,000-6,000

53
A LARGE AND RARE FAMILLE ROSE EUROPEAN SUBJECT PUNCHBOWL
EARLY QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-95)
Richly enameled with a procession of European horsemen, some with banners or swords, one
beating time on a drum and another blowing a trumpet, the interior with loose blossom sprigs
at the center and a deep border of lavish prunus blossoms within alternating spear-head registers.
15æ in. (40 cm.) diameter
$40,000-60,000

This very rare subject is known in just two other punchbowls, one in the Mottahedeh
collection (published by Howard & Ayers, op. cit., pp. 230-33 and by Hervouet et Bruneau,
op. cit., p. 222) and one sold Christie’s London, 31 October 1956, lot 31; and 10 July 1985,
lot 317 and 13 June 1990 (The Jarras Collection, Part I), lot 113. It is also found in a fshbowl
sold Christie’s Amsterdam 13 October 1998 and 2 October 2012 and from the collection at
Kasteel de Haar, a storybook Dutch castle in the van Zuylen family since 1482 and extensively
renovated by Baroness Rothschild van Zuylen in 1892.
Howard & Ayers suggest that the subject could have been commissioned in honor of
the centenary of the third Dutch Embassy to China in the 1660s that was recorded in
Nederlandsche Ost-Indische Martschappye op de Kuste en in het Keizerik Varr Taising of SIna
(Amsterdam 1670). While the premise of this theory is excellent, that date seems too late for
the bowl stylistically. More likely it commemorated the frst Dutch embassy that set off for
Peking from Batavia in 1655, returning two years later. That journey was famously recorded
by Johan Nieuhoff, whose Het Gezantschap became an extremely infuential work on China,
eventually being reprinted fourteen times and translated into English, French, German and
Latin. With 149 prints taken from the drawings Nieuhoff made while on the journey, Het
Gezantschap’s portrayal of China became the defnitive European vision of this exotic land for
at least a century.
It is even quite possible that these pieces were commissioned in the 1730s, which would have
been the 75th anniversary of this crucial frst VOC embassy to the court at Peking. Whatever
the exact occasion of the commission, clearly it recorded a specifc and unique historic
event that took place in the second half of the 17th century, as refected in the dress of the
horsemen. And this event was of great signifcance to someone of the wealth and the China
Trade connections to command such a large, richly enameled, special order piece of Chinese
export porcelain.

32 CHINESE EXPORT ART