Page 44 - Sotheby's Fine Chinese Art NYC September 2023

546
A YELLOW-GROUND FAMILLE-ROSE ‘MAGPIE 清同治 黃地粉彩喜上眉梢紋盤
AND PRUNUS’ DISH
MARK AND PERIOD OF TONGZHI 《同治年製》款
the base with a four-character mark in iron red 來源
Diameter 11 in., 28 cm
明成館，香港，1996年12月21日
PROVENANCE
Ming Gallery, Hong Kong, 21st December 1996.
Porcelains adorned with magpies and blossoming prunus
were one of the types of wares commissioned for the
Tongzhi Emperor’s wedding in 1872. The event was
particularly significant as it was the first imperial wedding
of a sitting emperor since that of the Kangxi Emperor, over
200 years earlier. Approximately 7,000 individual porcelains
of various forms (some functional, others purely decorative)
were ordered for this celebration in twenty-three specially-
commissioned designs.
A drawing of the design of the magpies and prunus is
preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing, where it notes the
quantities of each form to be produced, see Guanyang ciqi:
Gugong bowuyuancang Qing dai zhici guanyang yu yuyao ciqi
[Official Designs and Imperial Porcelain: Official Porcelain
Designs and Imperial Qing Dynasty Porcelains in the Palace
Museum], Beijing, 2007, pl. 12, where it is illustrated
alongside a slightly smaller dish (22cm diameter) of the
same design (also illustrated on the front cover). Compare
another dish (26cm diameter) in the Chang Foundation,
Taipei, illustrated in Ronald W. Longsdorf, ‘The Tongzhi
Imperial Wedding Porcelain’, Orientations, October 1996,
p. 73, fig. 13.
The popularity of the design of magpies and prunus at the
late Qing court is illustrated by the Xianfeng Emperor and
Dowager Empress Cixi’s admiration for Tang Zhengzhong’s
(fl. late 12th - early 13th century) Fragrant Dreams of Luofu,
recorded as being in the Imperial Collection in the Shiqu
baoji san bian. The original painting (now held in a private
collection) bears a colophon by the Xianfeng Emperor,
expressing his admiration for the image. Cixi later painted a
copy of it, completed in 1889, which is now in the collection
of the the Long Museum, Shanghai, and illustrated in Ying-
Chen Peng, Artful Subversion. Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image
Making, Yale, 2023, p. 136, fig. 86.
$ 20,000-30,000

84 SOTHEBY’S COMPLETE CATALOGUING AVAILABLE AT SOTHEBYS.COM/N11275 THE LEGACY OF CIXI. LATE QING PORCELAIN FROM THE BARBARA JEAN LEVY COLLECTION 85