Page 27 - Chinese Export Porcelain Art, MET MUSEUM 2003

The importance of the famille rose in export
porcelains lies less in the particular color than
in the range of palette made possible by the
opaque white, which offered shading and

compositional depth.
Once the custom of ordering armorials was
established, it was a natural step to commis-
sioning pictorial subjects, and the earliest

recorded ones are datable to the early 1690s
(figs. 18, 19). These were necessarily painted
in underglaze blue, but fine-line painting in
black, in imitation of the Western engravings
that were to become the most common icono-
graphic source, was in practice by the late
1720s. In 1722, in the second of two letters
describing porcelain production at Jingde-
zhen, Father Xavier d'Entrecolles mentioned
"painting in ink" as being a current but as yet
27. Plate. Chinese (Dutch market), ca. I740. Hard paste. Diam. II in. unsuccessful experiment. As with the famille
(27.9 cm). Helena Woolworth McCann Collection, Purchase, Winfield rose, the promotion, and even the invention,
Foundation Gift, 1984 (1984.224)
of this technique has often been attributed to
Jesuit influence, largely from the association
Known as 'Arbor, "this design accepted as the last offour commissionedfrom
is
of print-derived New Testament subjects and
Cornelis Pronk (I69I-i759) by the VOC between i736 and 1739. No preliminary
drawing survives, but in subject matter and decorative scheme it is consistent strapwork border patterns evocative of those
with the style of Pronk's recorded his "Parasol"and "Doctors" widely used in Vienna in the later years of
designsfor
patterns. Distinguishingfeatures are a narrative subject that hovers between Claudius Du Paquier's porcelain factory (1719-
Chinese and chinoiserie, border that combine-a little naively-Chinese 44). But penciled decoration has a definite tra-
designs
and stylized European decorative elements, and vivid color combinations.
dition in Chinese porcelain for the domestic
market, reaching from the Wanli period (1573-
1620) to the end of the seventeenth century.
The later examples depict narrative or land-
scape subjects, often traceable to woodblock
prints. While these were originally intended
for a literati clientele, they are seen on West-
ern forms for export, and, as they were also
executed in Jingdezhen, line painting after
print sources would have been a familiar tech-
nique. A parallel and contributing precedent
may have been one borrowed from Japanese
Arita porcelains of the late seventeenth century,
in which foliage was outlined and veined in
Plate, detail border on exterior rim
of

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