Page 26 - Sotheby's Dr. Wou Kiuan Collection CHINESE ART , Oct. 9, 2022

Of the present design, a very similar single vase is known, of similar size, differing in details
of the decoration and with a graviata ground, also from the collections of Lord Loch of
Drylaw and Alfred Morrison, later in the collection of J.T. and Ping Y. Tai, illustrated in Soame
Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain: The Ch’ing Dynasty (1644-1912), London, 1951, pl. CVI, fig.
2, sold at Christie’s London, 18th October 1971, lot 65 and again at Christie’s Hong Kong,
3rd December 2008, lot 2388. None of the many yangcai vases preserved in the National
Palace Museum, Taipei, is of comparable size. The Palace Museum, Beijing, owns another
yangcai vase painted with similar designs in a similar colour scheme, but of square baluster
form, with a pair of archaistic dragon handles (accession no. gu-154715). This bright pink
enamel was otherwise rarely used as a ground colour on yangcai porcelains.

Related butterfly and flower designs can also be found on two pairs of yangcai miniature
vases with ruby-coloured ground, one in the collection of the National Palace Museum,
Taipei (accession nos gu-ci-7373 and gu-ci-7374), illustrated in Liao Pao Show 2008, op.cit.,
cat. no. 22 and p. 279, fig. 116; the other in the Baur Foundation, Museum of Far Eastern
Art, Geneva (accession no. CB.CC.1930.626), illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics
in The Baur Collection, vol. 2, Geneva, 1999, pls 236-7. Liao suggests that these four vases
are the two pairs which, according to the Zaobanchu Huojidang (Archives of the Imperial
Workshops), were ordered to be sent to the Qianqinggong, the Palace of Heavenly Purity,
one of the main palace buildings in the Forbidden City, Beijing, in the 6th and 7th years of
the Qianlong reign (1741 and 1742).

Butterflies and flowers are also seen, in other combinations, on a ruby-ground yangcai
vase from the collection of George Salting in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(accession no. C.1461-1910), included in the exhibition China: The Three Emperors, 1662-
1795, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005-6, cat. no. 219; and on a blue-ground piece
in the Palace Museum, Beijing (accession no. gu-154599), illustrated in The Complete
Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelains with Cloisonné Enamel Decoration
and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 30.

50 A JOURNEY THROUGH CHINA’S HISTORY THE DR WOU KIUAN COLLECTION PART II SOTHEBY’S HONG KONG 51