Page 43 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

fig. 1
This exquisite bowl, finely painted in yangcai
enamels with an ornate composition of floral
blooms and feathery leaves, belongs to a select
group of porcelain produced for the Qianlong
Emperor in the early years of his reign, and
embodies two of his passions: his love of tea and
his taste for the sumptuous. Under the creative
genius of Tang Ying (1682-1756), superintendent
of the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen, unique pieces
were composed according to the aesthetic
direction of the emperor. New forms, colours
and techniques were continuously explored while
drawing inspiration from various mediums, as
evident in this bowl and cover.
A sense of the exotic is captured through the
feathery scrolls of the floral blooms that extend
around the vibrant blue ground in yangcai
enamels. These yangcai decorated pieces are
characterised by their successful synthesis of
traditional Chinese elements with newly acquired
Western techniques. Thus they required the
highest level of skill and execution and it is not
surprising that they are exceedingly rare. As the
term yangcai (‘Western colours’) suggests, the
palette is inspired by European paintings, which
relied heavily on the use of white pigment. The
craftsman of the present piece has employed
predominantly foreign hues of pastel greens and
pinks and placed them against a vivid blue ground
previously unseen on Qing porcelain. Yangcai
ware was greatly appreciated by the Qianlong
Emperor and it was housed primarily in his largest
private quarters, the Qianqinggong (Palace of
Heavenly Purity), located in the Inner Court of the enthusiast, composing more than 200 poems
Forbidden City, and in the European-style palaces
of the Yuanmingyuan. Liao Pao Show, in ‘On
Yang-ts’ai Porcelains of the Ch’ien-lung Reign’,
Stunning Decorative Porcelains from the Ch’ien-
lung Reign, National Palace Museum, Taipei,
2008, p. 36, notes that the production of yangcai
porcelain was perfected under Tang after the
Blue-ground ‘yangcai’ sgraffiato ‘floral’
guanyin vase, seal mark and period of
Qianlong (1743)
© Collection of the National Palace Museum,
Taipei
sixth year of Qianlong, following the Emperor’s
complaint that the porcelains made in the first
six years of his reign were of significantly lower stylistic trends of the time. A slightly larger
quality than those from the previous Yongzheng
period. As a result, sixty-nine pieces of yangcai
porcelain are recorded as having been presented
to the Qianlong Emperor in the eighth month of
the seventh year of his reign (corresponding to
1741).
This bowl is further embellished with incised
curling fronds in the sgraffiato technique.
Commonly known as jinshangtianhua (‘adding
decorative pattern onto brocades’), the
development of this laborious needle-point
etching technique is also attributed to Tang
Ying. Such rich decoration, coupled with the
harmonious spacing of the floral scroll, is
reminiscent of French rococo textiles, specimens
of which would have entered the court through
Jesuit missionaries and merchants in Guangdong
and catered perfectly to the Qianlong Emperor’s
predilection for the opulent. A vase similarly
decorated to the present bowl, in the National
Palace Museum, Taipei, is included in the
Museum’s exhibition, ibid., cat. no. 41 (fig. 1).
The form of this piece, with its cover that sits
inside the rim of the bowl, appears to have been
favoured in the early eighteenth century. It
allowed the tea leaves to be caught against the
edge of the cover when the tea was sipped with
the cover carefully held in place using the ring
knop. The Qianlong Emperor was a fervent tea
expressing his appreciation of tea culture as
well as the process of making tea leaves and
preparing tea. During the Qing, many of the tea
traditions that were established by the Hongwu
Emperor (1368-1398) of the Ming dynasty were
continued, such as the use of tea leaves rather
than tea cakes or ground tea. While many of the
utensils did not change as a result, a greater
assortment of shapes and designs evolved
with the flourishing porcelain production and
bowl and cover of this form, depicting a pavilion
in a landscape on one side and inscribed with
an imperial poem entitled ‘While the tea is
brewing, and it is raining outside, I dream of
going on a boat trip’, on the other, the panels
bordered by similarly decorated floral borders
on a ruby-red sgraffiato ground, was sold in
these rooms, 6th December 1994, lot 211, and
included in the exhibition Imperial Perfection. The
Palace Porcelain of Three Chinese Emperors. A
Selection from the Wang Xing Lou Collection, The
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 2004,
cat. no. 56; and its pair was sold at Christie’s
Paris, 14th December 2016, lot 72.
The Qianlong Emperor’s satisfaction with the
form of this tea bowl is evident as it is found
decorated in a variety of styles and media. For
example, see a simulation lacquer bowl and cover,
in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included
in the Museum’s exhibition Empty Vessels,
Replenished Minds: The Culture, Practice, and Art
of Tea, Taipei, 2002, cat. no. 139, together with
a gold bowl with cloisonné enamel flower scrolls,
cat. no. 159. Compare also a Qianlong mark and
period sgraffiato decorated white-ground bowl
enamelled with dragons and phoenix in iron
red, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, published in
Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong. Qing Porcelain from
the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1995,
p. 332; another, from the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, sold at Christie’s New York, 15th
September 2016, lot 967; a pink-ground version
decorated in puce enamel, sold twice in our New
York rooms, 23rd/24th April 1975, lot 342, and
again, 16th September 2008, lot 125, from the
collection of Frieda and Milton Rosenthal; and a
mille-fleurs enamelled version, from the C. Philip
Cardeiro collection, sold at Christie’s London,
13th May 2014, lot 92.
IMPORTANT CHINESE ART 41