A fine doucai 'medallion' conical bowl mark and period of Yongzheng

the widely flaring conical sides rising from a short straight foot to a slightly everted rim, finely and delicately painted around the exterior with four large floral medallions enclosing the flowers of the Four Seasons, peony, chrysanthemum, lotus and prunus amidst a dense undergrowth of foliage and grasses, each divided by floral strapwork, the interior with a central medallion enclosing two fluttering butterflies amid flowering sprigs encircled by a double line border repeated at the rim, the base inscribed with a six-character mark in underglaze-blue within a double circle

Christie's Hong Kong, 2nd November 1999, lot 533.

A Yongzheng bowl of this form and design in doucai enamels, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong. Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 202, pl. 31. See also a bowl, in the William Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1956, pl. 64 bottom. Compare also a bowl in the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art and Archaeology at the University of Durham included in Ireneus Laszlo Legeza, A Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Malcolm Macdonald Collection of Chinese Ceramics, London, 1972, pl. CXXXIX, no. 378; and one from the Paul and Helen Bernat collection sold in these rooms, 15th November 1988, lot 10.

A bowl in the Roemer Museum, Hildesheim, pencilled with the same design in underglaze-blue only, is illustrated in Ulrich Wiesner, Chinesisches Porzellan, Mainz am Rhein, 1981, pl. 45, where the author records a doucai example in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Hugh Moss in By Imperial Command, Hong Kong, 1976, p. 74, notes that the 'circular panel of decoration, the subject of which defines its own limits' is first seen on wares of the Kangxi yuzhi group and then incorporated into the Yongzheng repertoire at Jingdezhen.