A PAIR OF FINE CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE PRONK ‘DAME AU PARASOL’ DISHES, Qianlong (1736 – 1795), ca. 1736-1740.
Diameter: 17.3cm; 6 ¾ ins
BJ37
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Of circular form, delicately painted in varying shades of underglaze blue with 'La Dame au Parasol' after a design by Cornelis Pronk, decorated to the centre with a scene of...
Of circular form, delicately painted in varying shades of underglaze blue with 'La Dame au Parasol' after a design by Cornelis Pronk, decorated to the centre with a scene of a lady walking beside a reed-edged lake, shaded by a tasseled parasol decorated with tiered petals, which is held aloft by her attendant walking behind her, the lady is slightly crouching and gesturing towards waterfowl standing on the grassy bank, their individual crests intricately depicted, the background with aquatic vegetation, all enclosed within a narrow band of rosettes and sprays of apple blossom, prunus, berries, and further vegetation, the broad border with four figural panels, two with a lady, and two with a lady holding a parasol, and four cartouches enclosing water birds, representing each of the four birds depicted on the central design, all reserved on a honeycomb ground, the rim in a tea-glaze wash, the reverse further decorated with seven finely painted flying insects, the base glazed.
Provenance
An English collection bought at Sotheby's, London, 8 May 1990, lot 109, Angelo Caldas collection.
Literature
For a plate bearing this design, see Jorg, Chinese Export Porcelain, Chine de Commande, from the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels, published 1989, Pl. 45, p. 139. There is another famille rose example in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (accession number EA1991.36),
There is a blue and white charger in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, with the same design, (accession number 68.153, Helena Woolworth McCann Collection, Purchase, Winfield Foundation Gift, 1968).
Cornelis Pronk was born in Amsterdam in 1691. From 1734 to 1740 he was employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), who commissioned sets of drawings for Chinese porcelain. Pronk made four series of drawings over three and a half years.
In 'Pronk Porcelain', 1980, Groninger Museum Press pp.14-36, C. J. A. Jörg discusses in detail the four designs that are generally accepted to have been drafted by Pronk, the prototypes of which can be found in the Rijksmuseum.
It is likely that the design on the present dishes, known as 'Dame au Parasol', was the first to be completed, having been sent to China and Japan in 1736. These meticulously hand-decorated dishes would have had a high production price, and as such only a small number of Pronk pieces were ever made.
