A Large Chinese Famille-Noire 'Bird and Flower' Deep Bowl, Qing Dynasty, 19th Century

Black ground famille-verte vessels were highly esteemed by collectors up to the 1920s. The Kangxi era innovation was most enthusiastically sought after by major Western collectors of the late 19th / early 20th century such George Salting, James A. Garland, J. P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, Peter A.B. Widener, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The term famillenoire, considered a subcategory of famille verte, was coined in the mid-19th century, inspired by the classifications of Qing dynasty porcelains formulated by Albert Jacquemart and Edmont Le Blant in Histoire, Artistique, Industriele et Commerciale de la Porcelaine, 1862. The palette was exceedingly difficult to produce, a feature that only added to its appeal among knowledgeable collectors. To achieve the rich black ground, a copper green lead-­based enamel was applied over an unfired layer of cobalt blue painted directly on to the biscuit. The technique first appeared at Jingdezhen in the early Ming dynasty but, due to its inherent technical challenges, faded from the potters’ repertoire until the late 17th century, when it was revived and improved under the patronage of the Kangxi Emperor.

Extant securely dated Kangxi period famille-noire porcelains are of small size. For example, see a small bowl (8.5 cm height, inventory no. PO 3327), and a cup (6.6 cm height) and saucer (13.5 cm diameter, inventory no. PO 4284a, b) acquired by Augustus the Strong (1670-1733) and inventoried beginning in 1721, published in Linda Rosenfeld Pomper, "Famille-Noire Porcelains: Tracing the Taste through the 18th and 19th centuries," Arts of Asia 43, no. 4 (2013), pp 116 and 117. 

All famille-noire wares had long considered by 19th century scholars and collectors to be among the finest of Kangxi period porcelains. However, it was not until 1974 with the publication of John Alexander Pope’s catalogue of the Frick Collection of Chinese porcelains that doubts about the authenticity of these pieces gained significant attention. Pope, using the lack of any pre-19th century documentary evidence and citing numerous stylistic concerns, put forth a compelling argument that large-scale famille-noire vessels, particularly vases exceeding 45 cm in height, were either scraped and re-enameled Kangxi wares or Kangxi-style vessels produced in the late 19th century (for more on this see John Alexander Pope, The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue. Vol. 7 Porcelains, Oriental and French, New York, 1974, pp 87-90). Pomper further notes, "Significantly, there are no large famille-noire pieces in Chinese museums" (op.cit., p. 116). Current scholarship largely accepts Pope’s theory but the status of mid-sized wares, such as the present lot, remains debatable. It is hoped that new technical analysis, in tandem with further historical research and connoisseurial consensus may finally provide data that will provide definitive answers.

Bowls of this type are very rare, and only a few examples are recorded, consistently described as Kangxi period. One from the collection of S.E. Kennedy sold at Christie’s London, June 21, 1916, lot 64; the H. Johnston Collection sold at Christie’s London, June 4, 1929, lot 40, and exhibited at the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935, cat. no. 1725; the bowl sold again in our London rooms on July 14, 1970, lot 210 to Ira and Nancy Koger and is illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramic, The Koger Collection, pl.115; the bowl was then sold at Christie’s London, June 5, 1995, lot 231 and is now in the Jie Rui Tang Collection, illustrated in Jeffrey P. Stamen and Cynthia Volk, A Culture Revealed: Kangxi-era Chinese Porcelain from the Jieruitang Collection, Bruges, 2017, pl. 51 (inventory no. 1396). The second bowl from the collection of the Honorable Mrs. Nellie Ionides, Buxton Park, Sussex, sold in our London rooms, July 14, 1964, lot 358 and is illustrated in Famille Verte Porcelain of the Kangxi Period, Chinese Porcelain Company, New York, 1994, cat. no. 5. See another from the collection of Eugene F. Dixon, Jr., sold in these rooms, March 13, 1970, lot 62.