A GROUP OF FIVE EXPORT PORCELAIN PLATES AND DISHES WITH A DESIGN OF MARIA SYBILLE MERIAN

Estimated Value:

500 € - 800 €

Result:

incl. Premium and VAT

Description:

China, ca. 1740-50
D. 31,2 - 38 cm
Possibly for the Dutch market Painted with an iris and an orchid surrounded bv butterflies and caterpillars, the rim with a floral band in underglaze blue.
German private collection, assembled since the 1980s
This group of plates and dishes has a well-known design that is traditionally attributed to Maria Sybille Merian (1646-1717), a remarkable Natural Historian and botanical artist who travelled to the Dutch West Indies in 1698. She later published a book of her drawings 'Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium', publ. Holland 1705 and France 1771 as Histoire Génerale des Insectes de Surinam et de toute d'Europe. Her work was very influential but this particular image has not been found in any of her published or known works. In fact she did not usually mix flower species in the same drawing, unless it was part of a dramatic garland with ribbons. A second mystery connected with this design is the link with Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), a Dutch artist commissioned by the Dutch East lndia Company to produce designs on porcelain. A range of the 'Pronk' pieces are known and quite a few designs are attributed to him with varying degrees of certainty. They are charac terised by very elaborate and brightly enamelled borders and images of a European sensibility, even when featuring Chinese f igures. There must have been a workshop set up to produce these very high quality items and it is reasonable to assume that designs from various sources were developed for production, with a cross-fertilisation of ideas and details of border and back ground. In fact the 'Pronk' pieces were so expensive that they were not considered commercial after a while and production lasted for only about six years. The border of this dish is quite similar to that on the rims of the 'Doctor's Visit' and the 'Arbour' patterns. It will probably never be possible to fully work out who was responsible for this attractive design but they were clear ly Western and a trained artist rather than sirnply a talented supercargo. This workshop was very likelv in Canton in order to be under the control of the officers of the VOC and the necessary cooperation required between the enamellers and the potters at Jingdezhen would have been complicated. It is possible that this set the precedent for the later growth in workshops in Can ton, so that by the second half of the eighteenth century most of the coloured overglaze decoration on export porcelain was done there. D. 50,5 cm Provenance: Collection of Edmund Loewe, Munich sold 14.10.1976 to the Dr. G. Blüthner Collection, Baden-Wuerttemberg with an expertise for this charger, bought from his estate by the present owner, inventory no. 1449 Cf. a similar but much smaller plate in the British Museum, published Krahl, Regina; Harrison-Hall, Jessica, 'Ancient Chinese Trade Ceramics from the British Museum', Taipei, 1994, p. 80; Another plate with the same design in polychrome glaze in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Ceramics, Room 137; A large polychrome charger of that type is pulished by Cohen & Cohen 'Now & Then - Crouching Leopards, Hidden Dragonflies'London 2005, n. 8, For another enamelled example, see C.J.A. Jörg, 'Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum', Amsterdam, 1997, no. 334, p. 287; in Howard & Ayers, 'China for the West', vol I, pp. 304-5; and in the Hodroff Collection, 'The Choice of the Private Trader', D.S. Howard, 1994, no. 60 - Few chips to rim

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