A COPPER-RED AND UNDERGLAZE BLUE VASE, MEIPING QIANLONG SEAL MARK AND PERIOD

the well-rounded shoulders rising from a slightly splayed foot to a short straight rim, painted with a composite lotus scroll, the copper-red blooms enhanced with puce enamel, above a broad ruyi band at the foot and a band of lappets below the rim, the base inscribed with a seal mark in underglaze blue

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5th/6th November 1996, lot 783.
Sotheby's Paris, 13th June 2012, lot 186.

This elegant vase is unusual for its ornate design of scrolling leaves surrounding full lotus blooms and illustrates the European baroque influence on the decorative repertoire in China in the 18th century. The Qianlong period is not only considered the zenith of Chinese artistic and cultural production, but also an era when the interaction with European art through Jesuit missionaries was at its highest. The Emperor’s fascination with this new decorative repertoire manifested itself in the creation of attractive objects that combined well-known Chinese forms and designs with foreign elements, such as the present piece.

 

Vases of this design are rare and no other closely related example appears to have been published. Compare Qianlong mark and period meiping of similar proportions but painted with a variety of floral scrolls, such as one sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 17th November 1975, lot 57, and again at Christie’s New York, 30th March 2005, lot 362; a larger example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures in the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (III), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 207; another in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Museum’s exhibition Emperor Ch’ien-lung’s Grand Cultural Enterprise, Taipei, 2001, cat. no. V-3; and a fourth vase sold in these rooms, 16th June 1999, lot 801, and again at Christie’s London, 10th May 2011, lot 276.