Lot 45. A fine blue and white bottle vase, Transitional period, ca. 1650. H. 37,2 cm. Sold: €26 000 EUR (Est: €10 000 EUR - €15 000 EUR). Courtesy Nagel.

The bulbous body vividly painted with a secene and attendants in a continuous landscape setting, the tall garlic neck decorated with stylised tulips between flower scrolls repeated on the shoulder.

Provenance: From the estate of the collection of Ludwig Fabricius (1885 - 1966), who travelled to Asia several times between 1911 and 1914 on behalf of the Imperial Navy, by descent to a family member, the present owner.

Note: For examples of similar size and registers of decoration, with lower narrative scenes, in the British Museum, London and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, see Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 386, no. 12:83, and Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: The Ming and Qing Dynasties, London, 1997, p. 76, no. 62, respectively. A very similar vase, although with different figures on the lower section is in the Butler Family Collection. See Sir Michael Butler et al., Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family collection, 1990, no. 38. Butler feels that this group of vases were only made during the Chongzheng period. This form of bottle is probably the "knotted flask" ordered from Formosa in 1640 identified by T. Volker in Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company, p. 90. A similar bottle appears in a still life by William Kalf (1619-93) almost certainly painted before 1646. Illustrated by Spriggs, Oriental Porcelain in Western Paintings, plate 72c. 

Nagel Auction. Fine Asian Art - Day I, Stuttgart, 12 june 2023