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10 août 2012

Dish with peaches. Porcelain painted in coloured enamels. Qing dynasty, Yongzheng mark and period (1723–35)

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Dish with peaches. Porcelain painted in coloured enamels. Jingdezhen, China, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng mark and period (1723–35). Diameter: 50.8 cm. 719-1907. Dr Henry Couling Bequest. © V&A Images

The decoration recalls delicate Chinese court paintings of flowers on silk. The pink enamel common to Chinese porcelains in this period first appeared in China around 1720, but had long been known in Europe. The technology for this difficult colour may have been introduced by Jesuit missionaries at the imperial workshops.

Like most decoration on eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Chinese porcelain, the design on this very large dish is charged with auspicious symbolism, the peach being a symbol of long life. The painting is of exceptional quality, with very fine linear treatment and detailing: the style and overall composition emulate court flower painting on silk.

The colour scheme used by the painter is known in the West as 'famille rose' (literally 'pink family'), because of the prominence of the pink enamel. This was one of several terms coined in the 1870s, when Chinese Qing dynasty enamelled wares were all the rage in Europe and they were clarified according to their predominant colours, the other main categories being 'famille verte', 'famille jaune' and 'famille noire'.

'Famille verte' ('green family') was the earliest and most common of these four 'families'. All the coloured enamels used - mostly green but sometimes also blue, red, yellow and aubergine - are transparent. The pink enamel and the opaque yellow, seen on this 'famille rose' dish, appeared in the 1720s, at the least. A relatively large number of Jesuit missionaries served at the imperial workshops at the time that this colour was developed and it has been suggested that they introduced the method for achieving a pink enamel to Chinese craftsmen, but this has yet to be proved.

Mark'da qing Yongzheng nian zhi' written in cobalt blue on base

Bibliographic ReferencesLiefkes, Reino and Hilary Young (eds.) Masterpieces of World Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A Publishing, 2008, pp. 93.

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