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

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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