Page 183 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong April 2, 2019 Sotheby's
P. 183

This bowl belongs to a small group of wares adorned with
                                                               vibrantly coloured designs over a dark-coloured ground, and
                                                               with yuzhi reign (‘made for imperial use of ...’) marks. These
                                                               are rare and suggest a closer relationship to the imperial
                                                               court. Wares enamelled in the imperial workshops in the
                                                               Forbidden City of Beijing rather than by the imperial kilns
                                                               at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, bear such yuzhi marks,
                                                               but in overglaze-blue or pink enamel, since the plain white
                                                               porcelains came from Jingdezhen fully glazed and fired.
                                                               The significance of the underglaze-blue yuzhi mark, which
                                                               would have been added at Jingdezhen, has been much
                                                               discussed, especially since identical bowls are also known
                                                               with underglaze-blue nianzhi marks.
                                                               It has been suggested that such bowls were enamelled in the
                                                               Palace in Beijing, with only the mark inscribed at Jingdezhen
                                                               before firing. They seem, however, very different from the
                                                               typical Kangxi porcelains from the Beijing palace workshops,
                                                               and are part of a small but well-known range of pieces with
                                                               the same design painted in the characteristic Jingdezhen
                                                               wucai (‘five colour’) palette of the Kangxi period, which in
                                                               the West is known as the famille-verte. It is therefore most
                                                               likely that they were decorated in Jingdezhen, even if their
                                                               marks may indicate direct use at the palace. Hugh Moss in
                                                               By Imperial Command. An Introduction to Ch’ing Imperial
                                                               Painted Enamels, Hong Kong, 1976, p. 82, discusses wares
                                                               of this type and notes that until the craftsmen of Jingdezhen
                                                               became acquainted with the newly developed famille-rose
                                                               palette of the Palace Workshops, they continued to work in
                                                               the dominant style of the Kangxi period.
                                                               Bowls of this type are held in important private and museum
                                                               collections worldwide; a pair in the National Palace Museum,
                                                               Taipei, is illustrated in Porcelain with Painted Enamels of Qing
                                                               Yongzheng Period, Taipei, 2013, pl. 21; one in the Shanghai
                                                               Museum, Shanghai, is published in Wang Qingzheng, Kangxi
                                                               Porcelain wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection,
                                                               Hong Kong, 1998, pl. 95; another in the Asian Art Museum
                                                               of San Francisco, is illustrated in He Li, Chinese Ceramics.
                                                               A New Standard Guide, London, 1996, pl. 653; a pair, from
                                                               the Edward T. Chow collection and now in the S.C. Ko
                                                               Tianminlou collection, included in the exhibition Chinese
                                                               Porcelain. The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong
                                                               Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1987, cat. no. 89, was sold in
                                                               these rooms, 25th November 1980, lot 143; and another pair
                                                               from the T.Y. Chao and Meiyintang collections, published
                                                               in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang
                                                               Collection, vol. 4, London, 1994-2010, no. 1724, was sold
                                                               several times at auction, most recently in these rooms, 7th
                                                               April 2011, lot 4.
                                                               Similar bowls with Yongzheng yuzhi, Yongzheng nianzhi, as
                                                               well as six-character Yongzheng and Qianlong reign marks
                                                               are illustrated in The Tsui Museum of Art. Chinese Ceramics
                                                               IV. Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, pls. 158-60 and 166,
                                                               together with a rare Palace Workshop example with a Kangxi
                                                               yuzhi mark in puce enamel, pl. 123.












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