124.
A PAIR OF LARGE ‘BLUE AND WHITE AND COPPER RED’ FISH BOWLS
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th century
48 x 58 cm each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 1145, 1151.
Pine trees (song), deer (lu) and cranes (he), which appear in the freely arranged decoration on these fish bowls, are highly regarded symbols of longevity.
The style of decoration on these two fish bowls has similarities with that of the so-called “Master of the Rocks”. Rather than referring to a single personality, this style identifies a group of artists specialized in the decoration on porcelain, active between 1640 and the late seventeenth–early eighteenth century. It is characterized by a whirling rendering of the elements of the composition, in particular the rocks, obtained through the use of a hemp-fiber brush. This technique was first developed in painting by orthodox artists such as Dong Qichang (1555-1636), Wang Jianzhang (fl. 1628-1644) and other painters devoted to the elaboration of the styles of ancient masters, especially Dong Yuan (tenth century). Active between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the works of these artists were in some cases reproduced in prints, thus influencing the decorators of Jingdezhen. The style was experimented in particular on porcelain painted with cobalt blue, but there are also some examples in which blue combines with copper red, including a dish already in the Butler collection illustrated in J.B. Curtis, Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century. Landscapes, Scholars’ Motifs and Narratives, exhibition catalogue, Chicago 1995, pp. 70-71, n. 18, and in another dish in the collections of the Shanghai Museum which bears an inscription that dates it to 1672 (W. Qingzheng (edited by), Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong 1998, pp. 8-9, n. 6).
The ‘blue and white’ jardinièrs in the British Royal Collections (J. Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2 voll. London 2016, pp. 136-139, nn. 265-272) were probably acquired by queen Mary in 1688-1689 in Holland, as demonstrated by the discovery of fragments of similar containers from the excavation in the former royal palace at Het Loo near Apeldoorn (A.M.L.E. Erkelens, ‘Delffs Porcelijn’ von Koningin Mary II: ceramiek op Het Loo uit de tijd van Willem III en Mary II / Queen Mary’s ‘Delft porcelain’. Ceramics at Het Loo from the time of William and Mary, Apeldoorn and Zwolle 1996).
Kangxi period large fish bowls similar to these were also in the collection of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), now in the Porzellansammlung in Dresden. The Elector preferred to use them as cachepots for his beloved orange trees, even if he probably knew that they were used in China to breed goldfishes, because this kind of ornamental fishes had arrived in England already in 1691 (E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, pp. 54-55, n. 20).
