A RARE 'EUROPEAN SUBJECT' ENAMEL PLAQUE QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD

of rectangular form, finely painted in a stippled technique with a bucolic family scene depicting a mother resting comfortably, holding a walking stick, a small child happily leaning against one of her legs, the father seated alongside, all under verdant shading trees, a riverbank nearby, and farmers toiling in the rolling landscape in the distance, wood frame (2)

Bonham's London, 13th May 2010, lot 406.

There is a network of craze lines to the front and back. There is pitting to the top right hand corner and to the lower corners. A small patch of the leaves to the tree on the top right hand corner is retouched. There are two chips to the back edge. Otherwise, in good condition.
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The Euromania which had taken hold of the Qianlong court inspired not only a distinct European influence on the decorative arts but also a vogue for depictions of European figures in an array of media. Compositional elements and subject matter for this purpose were most often sourced directly from European prints, and recreated with such an exactitude as to incorporating the stippling, used to create the image by means of a greater or lesser density of ink.

The fine, detailed technique of the present panel indicates that it may be a product of the Beijing imperial workshop rather than Guangdong where it would have been destined as tribute to the imperial household. The Beijing imperial workshop produced smaller scale works, such as the present, and display a close, meticulously painted surface which invites scrutiny demonstrating mastery over the medium. While there is little doubt ascribing early Kangxi imperial enamels, when the technique was new and initiated in Beijing, and a number of 18th century snuff bottles to the Beijing workshops, attribution of other forms is more difficult.  Guangzhou artists proved so proficient in the new art of enameling that by 1716 it is known that the Kangxi emperor had summoned two artisans from there to work in the enamel workshop of the Imperial Household Department of the Palace.

European plaques such as the present example are normally compared to the large scale repoussé type which are known to have been produced in Guangdong as tribute gifts for the emperor and are painted in a very different style which, while detailed, is cursory in a manner more befitting generous dimensions. The present panel relates more closely to passages of similar subject matter found within forms known to have been painted in Beijing. Compare the landscape-painted panels on a faceted vase with landscape illustrated in Hugh Moss, By Imperial Command, An Introduction to Ch'Ing Imperial Painted Enamels, Hong Kong 1976, pl. 25, text pp. 49-51, for the similar treatment of the trees, grass, and foliage. A more closely related enamel painted bowl and saucer, with European subject figures in a landscape, in the Asian Arts Museum San Francisco and attributed to the palace workshops is illustrated in Marco Musillo, "Mid-Qing Arts and Jesuit Vision: Encounters and Exchanges in Eighteenth Century Beijing", Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals, Susan Delson, ed., New York, 2011, pp. 146-161, fig. 2.  in which the author discusses European Subject painting in the context of the Beijing imperial workshops and the influence of the Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione noting the more rounded forms and subtle tonal shifts providing the illusion of depth that is displayed when the Beijing artists painted European subjects. A plate of this same pattern, an idealized pastoral scene, of similar quality is illustrated in J.A. Lloyd Hyde, Chinese Painted Enamels, The China Institute in America, New York, 1970, no. 3.

While no direct source for the composition of the present painting has been identified, the composition bears a strong resemblance to Baroque era depictions of the 'Flight into Egypt'.