An extremely rare and fine 'famille-rose' tianqiuping mark and period of Yongzheng

the well potted globular body rising to a slightly flared cylindrical neck, finely painted with luxurious and herbaceous peonies in delicate shades of white, pink, iron-red and yellow growing on fleshy stems amid abundant veined leaves curling to reveal the bluish-green upper faces and lime green undersides, with a long slender branch of peach blossoms clustered with buds, and a tall blue-mossed magnolia branch bearing pale greenish-white flowers and tapering blooms budding from their furry brown coats extending on either side, with two grisaille butterflies fluttering through the lush foliage, the white and pink enamels drawn so delicately as to reveal the bluish-white glaze beneath and rendering the petals a gentle translucency

Sotheby's London, 16th June 1999, lot 807. 

A tianqiuping of this size, with very similar decoration and a six-character Yongzheng seal mark in underglaze-blue, is illustrated Beurdeley, La Céramique Chinoise, 1974, col.pls.91 and 92; another from the collection of R.H.R. Palmer, is illustrated in Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, 1951, pl.XC, fig.2; and a third was sold two times in these rooms, November 1982 and October 1991, and was included in the exhibition The Exquisite Chinese Artifacts, National Museum of History, Taipei, 1995, cat.no.121, from the collection of the Ching Wan Society. 

Another related vase with a Yongzheng sael mark, from the collection of Dr. Tamisuke Yokogawa, now in Tokyo National Museum, is illustraed in The World's Great Collections.  Oriental Ceramics, vol.1, 1982, col.pl.80, painted with similar flowers on the body, but with a peony branch on the neck. 

Compare also a smaller Yongzheng vase painted with chrysanthemum branches, from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan and Frederick J. and Antoinette H. Van Slyke, sold in our New York rooms, 31st May 1989, lot 221.