A Chinese famille rose “European subject” plate. Qianlong

The plate is decorated in the famille rose palette, with a scene depicting Les Oies de Frère Philippe, engraved by Nicolas de Larmessin after a painting by Nicolas Lancret, that is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The border is decorated with a gilt interlaced ground punctuated by four lobed reserves alternating floral medallions, pink peonies, and birds perched on branches, together with four smaller medallions enclosing chrysanthemum flowers, all enhanced with gilt scrolls on a white ground.

COUNTRY : China
PERIOD : Qianlong (1735-1795), circa 1750
MATERIAL : Porcelain
SIZE : 23 cm
REFERENCE : E756
STATUT : sold
Related works :

A plate with this design enameled in the famille rose palette is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (2016.114).

Another plate was published by Cohen & Cohen, Baroque and roll, p. 90, no. 58. Both plates with a different border.

See also Hervouët & Bruneau, La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes à Décor Occidental, 1986, p199, no. 9.13-15.

Additonal informations :

The story is from Jean de la Fontaine’s Contes et Nouvelles, and is inspired by one from Boccaccio’s Decameron. An innocent young man spies some beautiful girls and asks Br Phillip what they are. To prevent the youth succumbing to temptation the monk replies that they are only geese.

This was a popular subject on Chinese export porcelain mostly on tea wares and painted in grisaille. It was produced for about twenty years and some later pieces are quite crudely drawn.

This decoration is very rare in famille rose, here executed in high quality, and only a few examples of plates are recorded.

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