Page 72 - Chinese Export Porcelain MARCHANT GALLERY 2015

46. Famille rose bowl, painted in a continuous scene with the ‘Cherry Pickers’, with a lady dressed as a boy climbing a ladder
passing the cherries to a young man dressed as a woman collecting them in the front of his dress, with a further figure
leaning on a basket beside a seated dog with open mouth, the design repeated on the other side, all in bright enamels
with a puce flowerhead on the interior beneath a gilt chain border.
9 ¼ inches, 23.5 cm diameter.
Qianlong, circa 1770.
• From an English private collection.
• A similar bowl, from A. Aronson, Amsterdam, is illustrated by D. F. Lunsingh Scheurleer in Chinese Export Porcelain,
Chine de Commande, no. 213, where the author notes ‘One of the best-known subjects is that of the ‘Cherry Picker’
after a print by Nicolas Ponce (1746-1831). Painted in green, lilac, red and blue, it occurs over and over again on
plates and tea services, and shows a young man standing on a ladder, throwing cherries to a young woman who
catches them in her skirt. According to De Vries in Porcelein, Chineesch en Europeesch Porcelein, the French seek to
identify the man as Jean Jacques Rousseau and the woman as Madame de Warrens. Here too the Chinese painter
has simplified the composition, first by leaving out the donkey present on the print, and secondly by considerably
reducing the number of trees’.
• A plate of this pattern is illustrated by John Goldsmith Phillips in China Trade Porcelain, An Account of Its Historical
Background, Manufacture, and Decoration and a Study of the Helena Woolworth McCann Collection, pl. 60, p. 142.
The author notes on page 133 ‘The plate has for its subject The Cherry Pickers (Plate 60), a composition based
indirectly on Nicolas Lancret’s La Terre, as popularized through the engraving of C. N. Cochin’; another is illustrated
by Michel Beurdeley in Porcelain of the East India Companies, Fig. 29, p. 54. The author notes ‘La Cueillette des
Cerises was a favourite with the Chinese, which they copied from a print by Nicolas Ponce after Pierre-Antoine
Baudouin. It is also interesting to see that Boucher himself borrowed the central group for one of his pictures, now
in the Iveagh Bequest’. In Beurdeley’s illustration of the plate he also illustrates a print and painting on page 54. The
plate illustrated has not confused the genders, which appear to be confused on the present bowl.
• Another plate, from L. Luneau collection, Nantes, is illustrated by François & Nicole Hervouët & Yves Bruneau
in La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes, no. 4. 23, p. 89; yet another is illustrated by J. A. Lloyd Hyde in Oriental
Lowestoft, Chinese Export Porcelain, Porcelaine de la Cie des Indes, no. 53, Plate XV, pp. 88/9.

72