Lot 3619. A pair of famille-rose floral bowls, marks and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 18 cm, 7 1/8  in. Estimate 1,800,000 — 2,500,000 HKD. Lot sold 2,750,000 HKD (350,378 USD). Courtesy Sotheby's 2018.

each finely potted with deep rounded sides rising from a straight foot to a flared rim, painted on the interior with one or two pale green orchid blooms and loose petals, naturalistically placed as if they had fallen into the bowl, the exterior decorated with a large peony with lush pink, white and pale green petals, flanked by two pink roses and two buds on a long thorny stalk, and blue-petalled asters growing by a decorative garden rock, the veined leaves rendered in tones of light and dark green and the rock coloured in shades of blue, with a small fly hovering above at the rim and two multi-coloured butterflies fluttering on the reverse, the base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark written in three columns within a double circle.

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 11th April 2008, lots 2901 and 2902.

Note: These bowls belong to a distinctive group of Yongzheng famille-rose porcelains painted with floral motifs, often with prominent use of blue enamel, and with the mark written in three vertical columns. A similar pair of bowls from the Meiyintang collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 964, was sold in these rooms, 8th April 2013, lot 13. A famille-rose dish with a similar mark in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelains with Cloisonné Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 61.

A fine pair of famille-rose floral bowls, marks and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735), from the Meiyintang collection; 17.9 cm., 7 in. Sold for 6,040,000 HKD at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8th April 2013, lot 13. 

Cf. my post: A fine pair of famille-rose floral bowls Marks and period of Yongzheng (1736-1795)

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 03 Apr 2018.