Page 38 - Chinese Export Porcelain MARCHANT GALLERY 2015

24. Plate, painted in grisaille, sepia and iron-red with ‘The Fortune Teller’ scene with a well-dressed seated gentleman
and two children before a horse, with recumbent dogs, the man holding the hand of a gypsy woman carrying a child
on her back. Although, she is apparently a fortune teller, it is he who is holding her hand, palm upwards while she is
admonishing him with a raised finger, encircled by a gilt and black outlined band and a gilt and iron-red spearhead
border at the rim.
9 �⁄₁₆ inches, 23.3 cm diameter.
Qianlong, circa 1740.
• From the collection of Dr Hardouin, Nantes, western France.
• A similar dish, with a rococo border in the manner of du Paquier, is illustrated by David S. Howard & John Ayers
in China for the West, Volume two, no. 365, pp. 372/3; another, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, given by Mr
Louis Cahen, C.62-1957, is illustrated by Rose Kerr and Luisa E. Mengoni in Chinese Export Porcelain, no. 96,
p. 72; a further example is illustrated by David S. Howard in The Choice of the Private Trader, no. 68, p. 83; and
another from the collection of A. Sorin, Nantes, is illustrated by François & Nicole Hervouët & Yves Bruneau in La
Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes, no. 4.41, p. 95; another is illustrated by Luísa Vinhais & Jorge Welsh in their
exhibition catalogue of European Scenes in Chinese Porcelain, 2005, no. 55, pp. 212/3; yet another is illustrated by
Conor Mahony & Khalil Rizk in the Chinese Porcelain Company exhibition of Important Chinese Export Porcelain,
1995, no.37, p. 50.
• The painting closely follows a contemporary engraving ‘The Fortune Teller’ by the publisher John Smith (1652-
1743), and was apparently very popular throughout the eighteenth century. A Chinese reverse painting on glass of
the late eighteenth century in a Spanish collection also has this scene, with the signature ‘Smith’. A glass painting is
recorded as accompanying a dish of this pattern with a leaf and festoon border, sold by Sotheby’s London in their
auction of A Fine Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain, The Property of a Gentleman, 27th October 1970, lot 47, p. 21.

38