Page 20 - Chinese Export Porcelain MARCHANT GALLERY 2015

11. Large dish painted in famille rose enamels, the centre with a lobed medallion of a seated elegant lady, her robes richly
painted in aubergine, green and blue enamels with iron-red and gilt, playing a qin on her lap between a large censer and
two vases, one in blue and white enamel, in front of a chest of drawers supporting a stack of books, a gu-form vase with
peacock feathers and coral branch, a gilt teapot and tea bowl, all beside two wutong trees, the cavetto with white-enamel
scrolling foliate branches on a black cash-diaper ground, encircled by four purple-enamel reserves of flowering peony
and four iron-red and gilt floral reserves, all on an oxidised antimony ground.
13 ⅞ inches, 35.3 cm diameter.
Yongzheng/Qianlong, circa 1735.
• From a French private collection.
• Purchased at Beaussant Lefèvre, 10th March 2006, lot 37, p. 8.
• From the collection of Roy Davids, bearing label.
• One of a pair of plates is illustrated by George C. Williamson in The Book of Famille Rose, pl. XLVII; another plate
was included by Yu Chunming in the Nanchang University Museum Exhibition Jing Yan (an exhibition of Chinese
Export Porcelain), 2012, no. 20, pp. 126/7.
• The use of oxidised antimony was both rare and expensive, like gilt, it required a separate firing at a lower
temperature and in most cases, due to its nature, is completely worn away.

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