An Extremely Rare Famille Rose 'Peach And Bats' Medallion Bowl. Underglaze Blue Yongzheng Six-Character Mark Within A Double Circle And Of The Period

The finely potted bowl with deep rounded sides and a straight foot, the exterior delicately enamelled with five medallions each containing two bats in flight amongst naturalistic fruiting and flowering peach sprays, the fruit picked out in varying shades of pink turning to yellow with some raspberry blushes, and the leaves with tones of green, and yellow to suggest different stages of maturity, interspersed with white and pink blossoms, some budding and some in full flowering. 3½ in. (9 cm.) diam. Estimate £150,000 - £250,000 ($244,050 - $406,750) - price realized £181,250 ($294,894

Provenance : Alfred E. Hippisley Collection
C. T. Loo & Cie, Paris
John Sparks, London, purchased in 1935
R. H. R. Palmer Collection

Literature: A. E. Hippisley, A Sketch of the History of Ceramic Art in China, With a Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains, 1902, no. 96

Exhibited : Polychrome Porcelain of the Manchu Dynasty, London, Oriental Ceramics Society, 23 May - 21 July 1951, no. 174

Notes : This beautifully painted Yongzheng bowl is extremely rare, and no other bowl with precisely this decoration appears to have been published. While the combination of peaches and bats provided an auspicious design, which was popular on 18th century imperial porcelains, its use in roundel form on porcelain is seldom seen. Peach and bat roundels are however found on Qing dynasty imperial textiles, and an example is the very fine yellow silk twill chair-cover with silk and gold embroidery in the collection of the Bishushanzhuang Museum of the Imperial Summer Retreat in Chengde (see Gao Hanyu (Rosemary Scott and Susan Whitfield trans.), Chinese Textile Designs, Viking/Penguin, London, 1992, p. 192, no. 176).

The roundels on this bowl vary in the disposition of the peaches, bats and pink and white blossom, but in each case a pleasing balance is achieved. Each roundel contains two bats, bringing the total number to ten. The total number of peaches is sixteen. The choice of bats and peach branches bearing both fruit and flowers for the decorative design on this bowl is highly significant and auspicious. The peach blossoms are seen as symbolizing the beauty of young women since the colour and delicacy of the petals resembles their complexions. Bats are among of the most popular themes in the Chinese decorative arts. They provide a rebus for happiness, while in multiples of five (in this case ten) they symbolise wu fu, the Five Blessings of longevity, health, wealth, love of virtue and a peaceful death. Those bats painted upside down provide a further rebus, since the word for upside down dao is pronounced similarly to the work for arrived, and thus the upside down bat signifies 'the arrival of happiness'.

The peaches themselves are symbolic of longevity. When combined with bats on porcelains, eight peaches are normally shown, since the number eight is particularly associated with good fortune. As with bats, this bowl has been decorated with a multiple of eight peaches - sixteen. Peaches are associated with the Daoist Star God of Longevity, Shou Lao, and are also associated with the legendary peaches that that were believed to grow in the garden belonging to Xiwangmu, The Queen Mother of the West. Xiwangmu's peach trees were believed to bear fruit only once in three thousand years and to take a further three thousand years to ripen, but if eaten would confer immortality.

The choice of five roundels for the current bowl almost certainly has Daoist significance, for the number five is important in Daoist beliefs. It is possible that these five peach roundels symbolise the wu yue, Five Sacred Mountains of Daoism. These mountains in turn symbolise the five universal elements - fire, water, earth, wood and metal. It is very interesting that the design of five bats and eight peaches - usually associated with imperial birthdays - should have been doubled on this bowl, and such a powerfully auspicious design would have made the bowl an especially appropriate gift or commission for the Yongzheng emperor on the occasion of some significant celebration.

Like the well-known Yongzheng butterfly bowls (see The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum 39 Porcelains with Cloisonne enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 78, no. 68), to which it is clearly related, the current bowl's five well spaced roundels are shown against a plain white ground. On the one hand the undecorated ground displays the fine white porcelain body for which Yongzheng imperial porcelains are known, and on the other hand the delicate painting of the design is shown to best advantage without distracting background colours or details. It must have been clear to the decorators at the imperial kilns that such finely painted, carefully balanced, roundels - either peaches and bats or butterflies and flowers - needed no extraneous decoration.

This bowl has been in two prestigious English collections. It was formerly in the collection of Alfred Hippisley (1848-1939), who was appointed to the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service in 1867, and remained in China until 1910. His work took him to many Chinese cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Shanghai and Tianjin, and allowed him to develop his interest in Chinese ceramics. In 1902 he published a book entitled A Sketch of the History of Ceramic Art in China. Fine examples of porcelain from the Hippisley collection can now be found in a number of important international collections, including the Percival David Foundation (see the Yongzheng falangcai teapot with lotus decoration in the David Foundation illustrated by Rosemary Scott in Imperial Taste- Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1989, p. 85, no. 53). Later the bowl entered the famous Palmer collection, which is noted for the exceptional quality of its imperial porcelains.

Christie's.  A Private English Collection of White Jade Carvings. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art including Export Art. 4 November 2008. London, King Street. Image Christie's Ltd 2008 . www.christies.com