A superb pair of 'famille rose' mille-fleurs bowls, marks and period of Yongzheng

each with white porcelain body delicately potted with gently sloping sides, meticulously painted on the exterior with a dense and lush profusion of floral blooms and their foliage, including pink, purple, orange and yellow peonies, prunus blossoms, yellow mallows, orange lilies, pink lotuses, yellow hydrangeas, pink chrysanthemums, pinks, asters, dahlias, camellias, white magnolias, narcissus, blue morning glories, and a ripe pink melon in the center, the interior glazed white, the base marked with a six-character reign mark in underglaze blue. 14.3 cm., 5 5/8 in. Estimate 7,000,000—9,000,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: Acquired in Europe in the 1960s.

NOTE: The mille-fleurs pattern – in Chinese wan hua dui, 'ten thousand flowers piled up', or bai hua tu, 'hundred flowers design' – with its joyful evocation of nature's abundance is such a universally appealing motif that it is extremely well known despite being exceedingly rare. No similar Yongzheng examples appear to be recorded from the Jingdezhen kilns, where the pattern became popular only much later. Given the high standards of the imperial manufactories under the keen eye of the Yongzheng Emperor and the rigorous scrutiny of the kiln supervisor Tang Ying, this is not surprising. With its multitude of enamel colours, its complex densely interwoven layout, naturalistic representation of blooms and leaves with sophisticated shading and an astonishing attention to detail, this design must have been one of the most challenging for the imperial porcelain painters to master.

The idea for this demanding design appears to originate from the imperial enamelling workshops in the Forbidden City in Beijing, where in the Kangxi reign it was tried out on a minute copper vessel, a water pot of less than 3 cm height, which is still preserved in the Palace Museum today (fig. 1). Although a large number of different flowers appear on that vessel, their arrangement is less dense and the background was therefore covered with yellow enamel.

In the Yongzheng period, the design was transferred onto porcelain, both in the Beijing palace workshops and the imperial factories at Jingdezhen. When comparing the Beijing-enamelled examples of the mille-fleurs design (e.g. fig. 2) with the present pair of Jingdezhen-enamelled bowls, the outstanding quality of the Jingdezhen work becomes strikingly apparent. The composition, which effortlessly interweaves the different flowers, leaving practically no space of the surface blank, is admirably devised and could not be improved; the painting is crisp and precise down to the smallest detail, and the colours are most harmoniously balanced. This would seem one of the extremely rare instances where the Jingdezhen porcelain painters surpassed those in Beijing in their workmanship.

On the Beijing-enamelled mille-fleurs bowls with Yongzheng blue enamel marks the flowers are again more loosely strewn, as on the copper water pot, the rose-pink enamel is less happily counterbalanced with yellow (rather than iron-red like on the present pair), and the painting is less detailed and variegated in shading; see a piece from the Qing Court Collection still in Beijing, in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelains with Cloisonne Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999, pl.15 (fig. 2); and another from the Edward T. Chow collection, illustrated in M. Beurdeley and G. Raindre, Qing Porcelain. Famille Verte, Famille Rose, Fribourg, 1986, pl.146, and sold in these rooms (19th May 1981, lot 589). Another pair of bowls with blue enamel Yongzheng marks, with the mille-fleurs design arranged in form of a broad band around the outside, from the collections of J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) and Sam'l C. Davis (1871-1940), was sold in these rooms 29th October 1991, lot 253 and again 5th November 1997, lot 1352. Painted in the same style are some small dishes with blue enamel hall marks, which are attributed either to the Yongzheng or Qianlong reigns, such as a piece in the Shanghai Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], vol.15, Shanghai, 2000, pl. 20, and another sold in these rooms, 3rd May 1994, lot 225.

The Yongzheng period is noted for its remarkable care for proportions, and on the present pair the bowl shape has been perfected. This classic Yongzheng form was used for some of the best fencai designs of the period, most notably the iconic peach bowls, which represent another ingenious Yongzheng invention, but one that is much less rare. Compare a pair of peach bowls from the collection of Paul and Helen Bernat, sold in these rooms (15th November 1988, lot 44) (fig. 3), and a single peach bowl from the collection of the Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, sold in our London rooms, 16th May 2007, lot 104.

The mille-fleurs design was revived in the late 18th century and became very popular in the 19th, when it was applied to bowls, dishes, boxes and vases. At that time, however, the quality of the enamels and the painting had dramatically declined. If the exuberance of colour and design may at first glance divert from those deficiencies, these later examples generally do not bear close scrutiny. One of the rare fine Qianlong examples is the famous jar from the Camondo and Grandidier collections in the Musée Guimet, Paris, whose iron-red seal mark on a turquoise-enamelled base suggests a date rather late in the period; see, for example, Beurdeley and Raindre, op.cit., pls 164 and 165 or Xavier Besse, La Chine des porcelaines, Paris, 2004, pl.55 (our fig. 4); another is an altar vase in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, in Zhongguo taoci quanji, op.cit., pl. 37.

For other later versions of the mille-fleurs design compare a pair of small cups from the Dreyfus collection, also with iron-red Qianlong seal marks, exhibited in the Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst, Berlin, 1929, cat. no. 1042, and sold in our London rooms, 11th December 1973, lot 432; a pair from the collection of Reginald Toms sold in our London rooms, 5th December 1995, lot 314; or a mille-fleurs vase of Jiaqing mark and period from the Nanjing Museum collection, published in Xu Huping, ed., Zhongguo Qingdai guanyao ciqi/The Official Kiln Porcelain of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, Shanghai, 2003, p. 357.

Sotheby's. Eight Treasures from a European Collection. 08 Apr 09.  Hong Kong. www.sothebys.com photo courtesy Sotheby's