Pair of excellent enamel panels depicting horses and Europeans in the style of Castiglione

Estimated Value:

3.000 € - 5.000 €

Result:

19.425 € incl. Premium and VAT

Description:

China, 18th century
Je 13 x 15,7 cm
A gentleman in a green hunting coat and tricorn hat stands next to a white horse, which he holds by the reins. Both figures are in an idealised park landscape with trees, hills and architecture in the background. The sky shows pastel-coloured clouds, the light is soft and atmospherically modelled. The second enamel plate shows two horses in a wide, idealised landscape under a bright, cloudy sky. In the foreground stands a white horse with a grey mane and tail, calm and dignified, its head slightly raised as if aware of its grace. A little behind it, a chestnut-coloured horse turns in an elegant movement, almost playfully, as if it wants to scratch its neck or communicate with the white animal. The two animals appear both lively and of noble bearing, almost portrait-like. The middle ground öopens onto a green meadow with fine plants, bordered on the right by a rock from which slender trees and bushes grow upwards. A gentle mountain range rises in the distance, üover which lies a wide sky with lightly modelled clouds. The landscape is executed with fine brushstrokes and delicate colour modulation, creating a calm, harmonious mood. Old labels with the number 343 applied to a türkis-coloured enamelled background on the reverse.
European private collection, family-owned before 1970, originally collected in the second half of the 19th cent. collected in the diplomatic service in China
The Euromania that had gripped the Qianlong court inspired not only a clear European influence on decorative arts, but also a fashion for depictions of European personalities in a variety of media. The compositional elements and themes for this purpose were mostly taken directly from European prints and reproduced with such accuracy that even the dotting used to create the image through more or less dense ink coverage was adopted. The fine, detailed technique of the present panels suggests that they are a product of the imperial workshop in Beijing rather than Guangdong, where they would have been intended as a tribute to the imperial household. The imperial workshop in Beijing produced smaller works such as the present one, which are characterised by a detailed, carefully painted surface that invites close inspection and demonstrates mastery of the medium. While there is little doubt that early imperial enamelled works from the Kangxi period, when the technique was new and introduced to Beijing, and a series of 18th-century snuff bottles can be attributed to the workshops in Beijing, the attribution of other forms is more difficult. The artists from Guangzhou proved to be so adept at the new art of enamelling that Emperor Kangxi appointed two craftsmen from this city to the enamel workshop of the imperial household ministry of the palace in 1716. European plaques such as the present examples are usually compared to the large-scale repoussé plaques known to have been made in Guangdong as tribute gifts to the emperor and painted in a very different style, rich in detail but in a manner more suited to large-scale dimensions. The present panels bear a greater ößresemblance to passages äof similar subjects found in moulds known to have been painted in Beijing. Compare the panels painted with landscapes on a faceted vase with landscapes illustrated in Hugh Moss, By Imperial Command, An Introduction to Ch'Ing Imperial Painted Enamels, Hong Kong 1976, plate 25, text pp. 49-51 - Very minor restorations

Bidding

previous lot Catalogue next lot