Page 148 - 2021 March 15th Fine Chinese Paintings and Works of Art, Bonhams NYC New York

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN
COLLECTION

170
A SMALL FALANGCAI-ENAMELED ‘BUTTERFLY
MEDALLION’ BOWL
Double-encircled underglaze-blue Yongzheng
six-character mark, Late Qing Dynasty/early
Republic period (1900-1916)
With rounded sides, brilliantly painted in rich enamels
with four roundels of paired butterflies painted primarily
in tones of stippled brown and yellow with pink
highlights, with one in green, all within circular roundels
formed by their wings and curling floral sprays of pinks,
chrysanthemums, aster, peony, lotus, and prunus
blossoms, the interior plain.
4 3/4in (12.1cm) diameter

$3,000 - 5,000

清晚期/民國早期 琺瑯彩蝴蝶圖盌 《大清雍正年製》款
170
For two very similarly enameled bowls bearing
Yongzheng marks, listed as Qing Dynasty but with
spurious marks and with decoration possibly added
later, gifted to the Institute in 1930 by Mr. Lee Ling Yun,
see The Art Institute of Chicago, website www.artic.edu,
accession no. 1930.261.

This bowl well-illustrates the masterfully-devised
design of perfectly circular, un-bordered medallions
harmoniously formed from a combination of seemingly
unsuitable shapes: stems, curled leaves, petalled-
blossoms combined with either butterfly or bats wings
as a framework for the medallions, that was introduced
during the reign of the Yongzheng emperor. For a
Yongzheng pre-cursor with very similar decoration, see
Christie’s, Hong Kong, Important Qing Porcelain from the
Yuen Family Collection, 30 April 2000, lot 588.

For an illustration of Republic copies that illustrate
the difficulty of creating coherent roundels from such
disparate elements; see Ye Peilan, Appraising Ancient
170 Chinese Ceramics, Taipei, 1994, pp. 175-176.

146 | BONHAMS