A fine and very rare pair of sepia enamelled wine cups, Yongzheng six-character marks in underglaze blue within double circles and of the period (1723-1735). Estimate HK$3,500,000 - HK$4,500,000 ($453,726 - $583,362). Price Realized HK$3,640,000 ($471,875). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2015

Each is thinly potted and delicately painted, one with two scholars in a mountainous river landscape, the other with pavilions on a river bank. The interior of each cup is decorated with two small flowers decorated in the famille rose palette. 2 1/8 in. (5.5 cm.) diam., box

Provenance: S & G. Gump, San Francisco, 1920s - 1930s 
An American mid-Western private collection
Sold at Christie's New York, 26 March 2010, lot 1438

Notes: A new type of black enamel was developed during the Yongzheng period at imperial kilns in Jingdezhen under the supervision of Tang Ying, which unlike its 17th century predecessor that was matt and needed to be 'fixed' by a layer of clear green enamel, was glossy in texture and was used to great effect by the ceramic painters to simulate ink paintings, as seen on the current examples. 

Compare to a similar cup formerly in the collections of Paul and Helen Bernat, and Goldschmidt, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 13 November 1990, lot 25; another similarly decorated Yongzheng cup, also formerly in the Paul and Helen Bernat Collection, gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acquisition no. BMFA 59.24); and a faux-boisgrisaille-decorated brush pot similarly painted with a continuous river landscape in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Miscellaneous Enamelled Porcelains, Plain Tricoloured Porcelains, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2009, pp. 290-1, no. 239.

Christie's. IMPORTANT CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 2 December 2015, Convention Hall