The bulbous body with gently rising shoulder, flanked at the sides with a pair of gilt chidragon handles, the exterior finely painted to a continuous landscape scene with 'one hundred' deer in white, beige and brown in various activities, including prancing in open fields, grazing, eating lingzhi, drinking from a stream, lying at rest, grooming each other, all set in a lush mountainscape with pine trees, fruiting peaches, and lingzhi, the base with a six-character zhuanshu seal mark in underglaze-blue.
See also another 'hundred deer' vase dated to the Qianlong period with similar amber-coloured handles, currently housed in the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, illustrated in Qingdai Ciqi Shangjian, Hong Kong, 1994, p.117, no.146, also illustrated in Imperial Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum, Zwolle, 2011, p.87, no.57.
Bonhams. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 24 Nov 2013, 14:00 HKT, HONG KONG, ADMIRALTY