Lot 1139
Treasury 6, no. 1459 (‘A Profusion of Pines’)
HK$62,500

Famille rose enamels on finely crackled white glaze and blue glaze on brown stoneware; with a flat lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding flat foot rim, and with a recessed flat panel on each main side; painted on one with an elaborate pavilion in front of a towering peak and on the other with a man in a skiff beneath an overhanging cliff that enters the picture from the top of the oval (above the sun) and on the other side with a towering building, possibly representing a temple, on the far shore at the bottom of the picture area, both landscapes generously planted with pine trees in all areas, near and far, high and low; the surrounds glazed blue; the lip and foot rim unglazed; the foot and interior glazed white
Jagged Line Master, Yixing, 1810–1850
Height: 6.5 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.5/1.43 cm
Stopper: coral; turquoise matrix collar

Provenance:
Robert Hall (1984)

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 199
Treasury 6, no. 1459

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
National Museum of Singapore, November 1994–February 1995

Both the shape of this bottle and the blue glaze surrounding the panels are standard for the group of possibly imperial Daoguang bottles represented by Sale 3, lot 110. But there are also clues suggesting that this bottle may come from later in the artist’s career than, say, Sale 5, lot 40, suggesting that perhaps he worked between the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns, and that this example, with its typically Daoguang shape and blue frame, comes from the later period.

The enamelled wares of Yixing make no attempt at high art; that is left to the literati carvers designing, engraving, and inscribing their teapots and other scholarly wares. As far as we know, no scholar ever became involved in painting with enamels at the kilns; certainly, any identification of the enameller, as opposed to the potter, is extremely rare. The enamellers were devoted to producing more standard decorative wares for the elegant enjoyment of anyone from prince to shopkeeper. They may have painted the scenery and pastimes of the literati, but did not aspire to their lofty, painterly aesthetic. If we want to trace and attempt to date these enamelled wares, therefore, we must concentrate on the visual clichés that tend to arise out of decorative repetition. For example, the pine trees on lot 1029 in this auction and Sale 5, lot 40> have realistic and energized clusters of pine-needles, whereas here they have become more of a patternbook rendition. Lot 1029> seems to be the finer painting, followed by Sale 5, lot 40, while this one shows signs of more constant repetition. There is what may be a further stage in this stylistic progression in the Hui Collection (Hui and Sin 1994, no. 46), and it is dated to what can only be interpreted as 1849. The date is likely to be accurate even though the signature, pretending to be that of a famous early-Qing potter, [Chen] Mingyuan [陳]名遠, is not. The characters for the cyclical date are impressed in the clay with small, presumably wooden stamps; these must have been on hand at the pottery for use on any vessels in the year’s production that were to be dated. A full-fledged forgery attempt would have included a reign title appropriate for Chen Mingyuan. Accepting the Hui bottle as having been made in 1849, and taking into account the evidence of certain excavated Qianlong wares, we thus have a consistent school of enamelling at Yixing stretching from the late Qianlong through to the end of the Daoguang reign, and probably a little beyond. If this represents later work, then it must presumably date from the Daoguang period.

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