Of octagonal section and unusually large size, the lower part with four finely painted panels, one with a figure in opera costume, his attendant carrying a qin, beside a pavillion framed by trees and rockwork, a river flowing by, spanned by an arched bridge with figures crossing, three European figures in the distance, the other three panels decorated with misty mountain scenes, the foreground of each with boys on terraces holding banners, all reserved on a blue ground filled with gilt lilly scrolls and cloud motifs, the angled shoulders elaborately decorated with stylized pink and blue archaistic kylins biting the stems of floral sprays, centred on each side with a tasselled musical stone, reserved on a bright yellow ground beneath ruyi-head and classical scroll bands, a stylised lotus scroll beneath the lipped rim, reserved on a pink ground filled with feathery scrolls, the shoulders applied with handles in the form of ruyi-sceptres decorated with gilt dragons, the interior and base glazed turquoise. Underglaze blue seal-mark of Qianlong and of the period.
Literature
See Ayers, Bauer Collection Catalogue, vol IV, nos. A 628-9, for a similar vase with a blue ground; see also Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, pl. CIX, fig. 1, for a similar vase with a pink ground from the Bruce Collection, now in the Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Another vase in the Victoria and Albert Museum painted with the landscapes of the four seasons on a carved celadon-glazed ground is illustrated by Honey, Later Chinese Porcelain, pl. 101.
