Sample Catalogue Essay

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Vase with ‘Hundred Deer’ motif in yangcai enamel.

Qing dynasty, Qianlong period (1736-1795).

Jingdezhen, China.

Porcelain painted with overglaze enamels.

45.7 x 35.6 cm.

National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The second ‘Hundred Deer’ vase in this exhibition was made for Qianlong, and draws on the much older Chinese wordplay on the word lu (鹿/祿) as an auspicious rebus in art – cf. the wucai Ming vase earlier in this exhibition. Common among yangcai ‘Hundred Deer’ vases of this kind is a similar composition of spotted and white deer, the latter especially symbolising longevity, among cypresses and pines, while the vase itself is flanked by two archaistic handles. This particular vase belongs to a distinct group with blue handles with yellow details, as opposed to the usual red handles. Scholarship has suggested that the group was commissioned by Qianlong to commemorate the reinstatement of the imperial hunt, although there continues to be disagreement about when the vases with blue handles were made: Mark Elliot dates Qianlong’s first autumn hunt not to 1738 but 1741, which corroborates with the observation that the finest yangcai date to around 1741-44, under the supervision of the imperial ceramist Tang Ying. In any case, accepting that these vases were made to celebrate the revival of the imperial ceremonial hunt, the choice to use the ‘Hundred Deer’ theme imbues the painted scene with an additional layer of meaning by alluding to the Mulan hunting preserve near the Rehe estate, where at least one of these yangcai vases were kept. The hills nearby were famously abound with deer.

The development of yangcai porcelain using existing famille rose enamels along with new colours and Western painterly techniques has been closely associated with the appointment of Tang Ying to superintendent of imperial porcelain production. Liao Baoxiu, writing the catalogue introduction to the 2008 exhibition Stunning Decorative Porcelains from the Ch’ien-lung Reign, by the National Palace Museum, Taipei, contends that Tang Ying perfected the enamelling technique in the sixth year of the Qianlong emperor’s reign, after receiving a complaint that the porcelain being made had been of inferior quality to Yongzheng-era pieces. Qianlong would be thoroughly pleased with the outcome, and many yangcai porcelains such as this particular ‘Hundred Deer’ vase were commissioned by the emperor for special events. In Tang Ying’s own description of the technique, yangcai involved the use of enamels to imitate Western shading and detail in painting. The high level of skill required in addition to the limited supply of necessary enamel colours together meant that yangcai was produced almost exclusively in imperial palace workshops, or by Jingdezhen imperial kilns which received shipments of enamels from the palace.

Similar yangcai ‘Hundred Deer’ vases can be found in, among others, the National Palace Museum, Taipei, also home to the largest collection of extant yangcai; the Palace Museum, Beijing; the National Museum of Beijing; the Shanghai and Nanjing Museums; the Seikado Bunko Art Museum in Tokyo; and the Musée Guimet in Paris. A number have also appeared in auction sales over the past decade, coming mostly from private collections located outside of China (in particular the US and France), with acquisition provenance from the early twentieth century. Yangcai porcelain has followed a similar pattern of movement across the globe, with a majority of extant examples kept in the collections of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, some more in Beijing and Tokyo, and a notable few in the Grandidier collection, today a part of the Musée Guimet. Unlike famille rose porcelains, many of which were made as export porcelain though on a lower scale than was blue and white, yangcai rarely left the palace, and only after the fall of the Qing dynasty was the style more widely imitated and replicated under a new term, falangcai.

(597 words)