CHINA - Lot 61

CHINA Set of three porcelain vases, one in the form of a baluster bottle and the other two in the form of a cornet vase with polychrome decoration in famille rose enamels of a parrot holding cherries on a perch after Cornelis Pronk. 18th century, Qianlong period (1735-1796), circa 1740. H. 28 cm. A small chip at the base of a bottle vase, a restored chip on the neck of a cornet vase. In the 1730s, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) embarked on the manufacture of very high quality porcelain in China, based on specific designs produced in the West in the Chinese style. In August 1734, it commissioned Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), the famous Dutch ornamentalist, to create designs for Chinese porcelain. Over a period of three and a half years, he produced four series of designs that were sent to Batavia. The designs were then sent to Canton. Some are preserved at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Several other drawings have been attributed to him, nine of which are listed by David S. Howard and John Ayers in China for the West, vol. I, p. 294, where other drawings attributable to Pronk are also discussed. A cornet vase with the same decoration is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, c46-1951 and a pair of baluster vases is illustrated by Mary Salgado Lobo Antunes in Porcelanas e Vidros, Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, Museo-Escola de Artes Decorativas Portuguesas, Lisbon 1999, p. 74-75. A bowl of this type from the Martin Hurst collection is illustrated by G. Williamson, The Book of Famille Rose, 1970, pl. XLII.A set of five vases with this motif is in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem. This lot is a temporary import. The buyer must pay import duties of 5.5% (6.6% incl. VAT) of the hammer price, in addition to the usual fees. These additional costs may be refunded to the buyer on presentation of customs documents for export outside the European Union.