18th-Century Chinese Export Porcelain Famille Rose ‘Garden’ Dishes - a Pair

Details

Description

Chinese Export Famille Rose "Garden" Dishes, Pair
Qianlong Period, Circa 1740–1760

An attractive pair of large circular dishes painted in … Read more Chinese Export Famille Rose "Garden" Dishes, Pair
Qianlong Period, Circa 1740–1760

An attractive pair of large circular dishes painted in the famille rose palette with a finely observed "garden" composition drawn from the world of the scholar's retreat. Each is well potted, with a broad flat well, gently curved cavetto, and wide rim, the good white porcelain body a fine ground for the polychrome enamels. The center presents an idealized garden of real charm: a low red lattice fence enclosing a bold blue-and-white Taihu scholar's rock, a yellow gourd-form vessel on a stand, a potted orchid and blooming peony, and an upright garden screen painted with a distant mountain and pavilion — a picture within a picture. Above, a gnarled pine spreads its canopy and a prunus branch reaches in delicate blossom, evoking the "Three Friends of Winter." The rim is richly worked in the mid-Qianlong export manner, with alternating cobalt-blue panels of scrolling white arabesques and tobacco-gold cartouches of peonies and chrysanthemums, the dense border a lovely foil to the open, airy garden within. A handsome, decorative pair for a dining room, a shelf of export porcelain, or displayed on stands along a mantel or console.

Dimensions
Diameter: 13½ inches (34.3 cm)
Height: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Provenance
Private American collection
Vernay, New York (old gold foil label with red text reading, "Vernay New York, Guarantee Genuine")

Historical Context
The "garden" or "rockery" subject — scholar's rocks, potted plants, garden furniture, and an enclosing fence with a distant landscape beyond — was among the most enduring decorative subjects in eighteenth-century Chinese export porcelain. Its appeal to European and American buyers lay in its legibility as an image of refined leisure, its botanical interest, and its delicate, open composition, which showed the white porcelain to advantage. The flowers carry well-understood meanings in the Chinese literati tradition: the peony for wealth and honor, the orchid for rectitude, and pine and prunus together for endurance and renewal. Related "garden" dishes are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Rijksmuseum.

(Ref: NY11153-urrx) See less