Chinese Export Famille Rose Porcelain Soup Tureen, Cover & Stand, Circa 1765

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Chinese Export Famille Rose Porcelain Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand, Circa 1765
Qianlong Period, Circa 1765

This Chinese export porcelain … Read more Chinese Export Famille Rose Porcelain Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand, Circa 1765
Qianlong Period, Circa 1765

This Chinese export porcelain soup tureen, cover and stand is painted in the famille rose palette and dates from the Qianlong period, circa 1765. The oval tureen has deep rounded sides rising from a spreading foot, and its domed cover is surmounted by a pierced crown finial in iron-red dotted with gold, set on a collar of green leaves. At each end is a handle modeled as a hare's head, enameled in iron-red and flecked with gold, the eyes picked out in white and black.

Each side of the tureen and cover is painted with a large bouquet in thick, bright enamels: a full pink peony above deep turquoise-green leaves, a shaggy lavender-pink chrysanthemum, two yellow blossoms outlined in black, and sprays of small iron-red and rose-pink flowers. Smaller sprigs, among them a rose and blue asters, are scattered at the ends. The rims carry a narrow band of iron-red and gilt cell diaper broken by reserves of blue scrollwork, and the edge of the cover is banded in gold.

The oval stand repeats the design, with the principal bouquet filling the well and smaller sprays around it, within the same diaper border.

With its stand, the tureen makes a centerpiece for a dining table or sideboard, and it sits equally well on a console or among other export porcelain in a cabinet.

Dimensions:
Height: 9¾ inches (24.8 cm)
Width: 12½ inches (31.8 cm)
Depth: 10¾ inches (27.3 cm)
Stand Length: 12½ inches (31.8 cm)
Stand Width: 10¾ inches (27.3 cm)

Provenance: Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition: Good antique condition. The black enamel on one eye of one hare-head handle has been touched in.

References:
For European forms made to order in Chinese export porcelain, see Clare Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974), and David S. Howard and John Ayers, China for the West (London and New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1978).

Historical Context:
Famille rose takes its name from the opaque rose-pink enamel, derived from colloidal gold, that was introduced to the Chinese palette around 1720. Used with an opaque white that allowed colors to be shaded, it had displaced the earlier famille verte on export wares by the 1730s. The term is a 19th-century French one, coined by Albert Jacquemart.

The soup tureen is a European form with no precedent in Chinese ceramics, and Chinese potters made it to order after European silver, faience and porcelain models. The crown finial and animal-head handles of this example are drawn from that European repertoire and are characteristic of dinner services of the 1760s. The porcelain was made at Jingdezhen, and by this date wares for the Western trade were generally enameled in the workshops of Canton, close to the merchants who ordered them.

(Ref: NY11018-ncnr) See less