An unusual turquoise-ground famille-rose wall vase seal mark and period of Qianlong

of rectangular section, moulded with three indented gilt-edged canted panels enclosing three scenes, the front depicting five boys engaged in playful pursuits in a terraced garden, one flying a kite, while others look on, set amid rockwork issuing clusters of small red berries, scrubs and grasses, the two other sides painted with similar serene lakeside landscape scenes depicting a small figure by a pavillion amid pine, prunus and other lush vegetation, with jagged mountain peaks rising and fading in the distance, the panels divided by lotus, camellia and other blooms on meandering leafy stems, all reserved on a turquoise-ground decorated in sgraffiato technique with feathery foliate scrolls, the rim gilt, the interior pierced with compartments, the interior, backside and base glazed turquoise, the base with a central square reserved in white for the six-character seal mark in underglaze-blue

It is extremely unusual to find a wall vase shaped after a brushpot and no similar example seems to be published.

Porcelains with shaped panels, like windows, decorated with figural or landscape scenes are typical of the Qianlong period, although the style first seems to have been developed during the Yongzheng period. Compare for example a brushpot in the Palace Museum Beijing enameled in grisaille on two sides with scholars in a mountainous landscape and with two famille-rose panels of flower sprays in ‘boneless?style, illustrated in Porcelains with Cloisonne Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration ?The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Vol. 39, Hong Kong, 1999, cat.no.53.

For examples of porcelains decorated similarly with shaped panels of landscapes and figures on coloured grounds and bearing a similar blue and white six-character seal mark on a turquoise-ground, see for example a teapot and a vase in the Palace Museum Beijing, ibid pl. 108 and 103.