An outstanding Imperial enameled metal snuff bottle Beijing Palace Workshops, mark and period of Qianlong, 1750-1799

of compressed spherical form, finely painted with a continuous garden scene, with a pair of quails turning attentively below a luxuriant flowering rose and smaller asters, the narrow side with a bright purple begonia, and the reverse with an exotic yellow day-lily blooming beneath a spreading pine as a crested long-tailed bird with mauve breast arches down from a branch, all against a delicately stippled ground treated in coloured bands of orange, lime and blue, with a collar of Rococo lappets at the neck, matching enameled stopper, wood stand

Pugh Collection no.59.
Collection of Seth B. Robinson, Greenwich CT, sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, NY, 2 May 1940, lot 43, for $45.

 

Continuous garden scenes populated by birds and flowers are a relatively rare subject for Imperial enamels on metal, and the present bottle is one of the most outstanding examples. See another bottle of baluster shape painted with similar pine tree above flowering plants, with an identically stippled sky and progression of banding from blue to pink above the foot, in Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary & George Bloch, London, 1987, no. 8. More importantly, a rare few actually bear Qianlong yuzhi marks, see Hughes, The Blair Bequest, no.345, and one illustrated Stevens, A Collector's Book of Snuff Bottles, no.971, exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Snuff Bottles of the Ch'ing Dynasty, 1978, cat.no.14, together with a Jiaqing yuzhi example in the Seattle Art Museum, cat.no.15.

It appears that the level of quality in execution within this 'stippled ground' series deteriorates sharply through the Qianlong period. Compare a Qianlong-marked cylindrical bottle illustrated by Kleiner, Treasures of the Sanctum of Enlightened Respect, no.5, and a Jiaqing-marked flattened ovoid bottle, illustrated Geng Baochang & Zhao Binghua, Zhongguo biyanhu zhenchang. 'Snuff Bottles for Connoisseurs' Collection', pp.305, fig.ii. The present Pugh bottle appears to exceed these in quality, and may arguably be an earlier commission, certainly executed within the middle of the Qianlong reign when Rococo lappet-collars were popular, which are notably lacking on the Bloch bottle and the others of the yuzhi-marked group. Instead, a complex Rococo lappet-collar is found on a bottle of different form, but with similar 'stippled garden' subject, from the Seattle Art Museum, exhibited in Hong Kong, op.cit., cat.no.95, illustrated in color, pp.135.

Compare a series of bottles in the former Imperial collection, The Complete Collection of Treasures in the Palace Museum, nos.142-147, of which no.142 has a similar enameled stopper, and no.147 has extremely similarly painted quail upon a stippled ground. Compare also a bottle painted with two magpies in famille-rose enamels against an unusual blue 'souffle' sky similar to the present bottle from the J & J Collection, sold Christie's Hong Kong, 25 April, 2004, lot 842. See also other related bottles painted with a continuous scene of birds and flowers, Moss, Graham & Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, vol. 1, no. 177, and Geng Baochang, op.cit., no. 384.