Page 316 - Christies King St. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

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A RARE GRISAILLE-DECORATED ‘MALLET’ VASE,
YONGZHENG PERIOD (1723-1735)

清雍正 墨彩通景山水圖搖鈴尊

The vase has a fat base and domed body rising to a tall cylindrical neck with a lipped mouth rim. The body
is delicately decorated with an idyllic landscape with pavilions set against trees next to a fast fowing river
inhabited by fgures on boats and a further fgure crossing a bridge.

7¡ in. (18.3 cm.) high

£40,000-60,000 $61,000-91,000
€55,000-82,000

The current vase belongs to a well-known group of wares from the Yongzheng period, delicately painted
in the grisaille palette, closely following traditional Chinese ink painting.

It was during the Yongzheng period that this type of decoration frst appeared, most likely infuenced
by European sepia wares. Under the supervision of Superintendent Nian Xiyuao and Tang Ying (as
listed by Xie Min, governor of Jianxi province between 1729 and 1734, in the Jiangxi Tongzhi, General
Description of the Province of Jiangxi, published in 1732), porcelain wares decorated in black made their
frst appearance.

This new technique and style of decoration enabled the painter to closely follow the style of traditional
Chinese landscape painting, with carefully rendered fgures and clever use of shading to depict texture
and light. Such wares were among the Yongzheng Emperor’s favourites, refecting his refned and
scholarly taste; it also echoed his great fondness for traditional Chinese ink painting.

For a Yongzheng-marked brush pot painted in the grisaille palette, see Michel Beurdeley and Guy
Raindre, Qing Porcelain, Famille Verte, Famille Rose, London, 1987, p. 96, pl. 133. For another brush pot,
with ‘painterly’ landscapes in sepia, see Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Qing Porcelain from the Palace
Museum Collection, Beijing, 1989, p. 239, pl. 68.

Compare also the style of painting on a Yongzheng-marked brush pot, decorated in grisaille with
‘painterly’ landscapes, sold at Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 23 October 2005, lot 207.

Two mallet-shaped vases of similar size painted in falangcai enamels with fgures in landscapes in a
similar style, formerly in the Alfred E. Hippisley and J. Insley Blair collections, are illustrated by Hippisley
in A Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains: With A Sketch of the History of Ceramic
Art in China, Washington, 1890, pl. 130 and A Sketch of the History of Ceramic Art in China, with a
Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains, Washington, 1902, pl. 130, and later sold at
Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2012, lots 2122 and 2123.

See also a painted enamelled ‘Autumn Pavillion’ mallet shaped vase sold at Christie’s Hong Kong,
29 May 2013, lot 3213.

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