AN IMPERIAL BEIJING ENAMEL ‘WOMAN AND CHILD’ SNUFF BOTTLE PALACE WORKSHOPS, BLUE ENAMEL MARK AND PERIOD OF QIANLONG

with a flat lip and flat foot surrounded by a flat footrim, painted with a continuous waterside landscape scene with two foreground trees, one blossoming, and rocks, the far shore with trees and a European building, the foreground with a Chinese woman seated against a rock, and a young boy leaning against another rock and holding two flowers in his left hand, with two butterflies in the air over each figure, the neck with a band of formalized floral design above a border of formalized lingzhi, the foot inscribed with the four-character reign mark in blue enamel, the interior covered with an extremely patchy, thin turquoise-blue enamel, the exposed metal gilt; the gilt-silver stopper chased with a formalised floral design

Collection of Bob C. Stevens.
Trojan Collection.
Robert Hall, London, 1993.

Chinese Snuff Bottles and Dishes, Mikimoto Hall, Tokyo, 1978, cat. no. 365.
Chinese Snuff Bottles V: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Trojan, Robert Hall, London, 1992, cat. no. 15.
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, The British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 13.
Israel Museum, 1997.

Elisabeth Kardos, 'Giuseppe Castiglione', Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, March 1978, p. 10, figs. 26 and 27.
William W. Harris, 'Review of the Bob C. Stevens Exhibition at the Mikimoto's', Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, December 1978, p. 43.
Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 6, Hong Kong, 2007, no. 1084.

The neck has been fairly extensively restored in the red floral design area. There is one small patch of restoration to the far bank of the river and part of the water in front of the seated boy (1 x 1.1 cm), and another to the upper part of the small building, portion of the sky and part of the tree branch above (1.8 x 1.2 cm). There is some surface abrasions from use and rubbing to the gilded parts.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This example represents one of several types of enamelling work of the middle period of the Qianlong era, from the 1750s to the 1770s. It is part of a broad but distinctive group of enamels in which a series of features define the group as a whole, although not all features are common to every bottle. Shapes tend to be fatter, broader, and more substantial. The palette remains the same, but its use is different, giving the impression of lighter, less dense designs with a greater emphasis on pastel shades. The landscape takes on a more dominant role in a compositional equation that, in turn, leads to a much greater sense of space. This sense of space is accentuated by another feature of the group: continuous designs. Instead of the ubiquitous panels of decoration reserved against densely decorated, floral surrounds, borders are relegated to neck, shoulders, and around the outer footrim, allowing more space for the main decoration. The heads of figures are generally larger in proportion to their bodies. Borders, apart from becoming more of a background decorative feature, are also distinctive. The occasional narrow band of ruby-red scrolling vine on a paler ruby-pink ground found on some of the earlier wares becomes a broad neck band, often with large flower heads as a focal point. These dark-on- light bands of the same colour are typical of Palace enamelling and on this group appear also in blue. Other features of the borders for the group are bands of repeated dots, again often of dark-on-light of the same colour, or of iron red on yellow; a series of repeated, simplified, formalized lingzhi resembling the head of a ruyi-sceptre, often in two tones of blue, as on this example; and more prominent use of simple bands of monochrome colour placed horizontally. Reign marks are still very carefully drawn, in formal, regular script and blue enamel, but are often rather larger than on earlier examples.

Another major difference lies in the metalwork at the neck. On Kangxi, Yongzheng, and early-Qianlong enamels on metal, the mouth is wide, the lip narrow. Often the lip is no wider than the thickness of the wall of the bottle, rounded off, and with additional gilding; sometimes the lip is shaped to give a flat, although still narrow, lip with a sharp-edged profile, in which case there is a concomitant straight cylindrical inner neck. On the group from the mid-reign, however, a separate plate of metal is often added to the neck and the mouth cut through it; it is as if a washer had been welded to the upper walls of the original neck, leaving a circular ‘shelf’ as the lip. This may reflect a mid-Qianlong shift in fashion towards narrower mouths for snuff bottles, ending up with the virtuoso tiny mouth on some hard-stone bottles.

There are several points of reference, particularly in the drawing of the landscapes and trees, between the decoration on this group and various Guangzhou wares of the Qianlong period, some of which can be reasonably dated to the mid-Qianlong reign. This suggests that the group may have arisen out of a Guangzhou enameller or a Jesuit artist being seconded to Beijing and bringing with him recent styles current in the south — derived, perhaps, from fresh designs from Europe reflecting a change in artistic style there. In this respect, it is interesting to note the completely flat foot here, level with the rim — a common feature on Guangzhou enamels of the Yongzheng and early Qianlong periods, but quite unusual on early-Qianlong Imperial enamelled wares, where a concavity is standard even when the footrim is barely recessed at all.