DIMENSIONS

Heights: 4 ¾ and 5 ¼ inches

 

PROVENANCE

• The Chinese Porcelain Company, Ltd., New York, 1996

• Mrs. Elizabeth Halsey Dock, New York

 

EXHIBITED

Delaware, Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1957

 

LITERATURE

Wilmington Society of Fine Arts Exhibition of Chinese Export Porcelain and Enamels, no. 287

 

CATALOGUE NOTES

A pair of plaques. Each of square, slightly domed form. Painted in polychrome enamels with a wash technique. The first with a grassy slope with a tree in the left corner underneath which is a European gentleman seated on a large rock and gesturing to an approaching feline-like animal. The background with an architectural form near rocks. The left foreground corner with a small rock and grass. The second depicting a steep grassy slope on the right side of which is a large tree with the foliage applied in thick green tones of enamel below which is seated a European gentleman holding a small furry dog-like animal in his lap.

 

RELATED EXAMPLES

The subject of a lion and a European man as depicted on the right illustrated plaque is particularly interesting in that it closely relates in subject and depiction to a group of Kangxi biscuit figures modeled in the round depicting the same subject of a European man and a lion. A number of these biscuit examples, in various poses, are recorded and published. One figure with both the lion and European gentleman in a standing position is illustrated by Scheurleer in Chinesisches und Japanisches Porzellan in Europaischen Fassungen, number 38; another figure of a European man seated on the back of a lion from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ('79, 2.11) is illustrated by Valenstein in A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, number 228; and another figure from the Copeland Collection of a seated European gentleman approached by a lion is illustrated by Sargent in The Copeland Collection, number 16, who also cited further related examples.