A Chinese “en grisaille” and gilt marriage plate for the Dutch market. Yongzheng period.

Finely and delicately decorated with an allegorical marriage scene in a grand architectural setting, below an arch inscribed SEMPER AMOR PRO TE FIRMISSIMUS ATQUE FIDELIS, the columns on either side surmounted by small coats-of-arms of Nicolas Geelvinck and Johanna Graafland, Neptune and sea-nymphs emerging from reeds to watch the scene in the foreground, the well with gilt ruyiheads and the rim with a band of gilt Meissen-style lacework.

Provenance

Galerie Vandermeerch, 23 quai Voltaire, Paris.

Related works

This decoration appears on at least six known armorial services, all made for Dutch families.

A plate from the service Geelvinck/Graafland is illustrated by Hervouët & Bruneau in La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes à Décor Occidental, Paris, 1986, p. 316, fig. 13.87 (Van Leeuwen, La Haye).

Another plate, from the Mottahedeh collection, from the service Geelvinck/Graafland is illustrated by Howard & Ayers in China for the West, London and New York, 1978, vol.II, p.394, no. 391.

Another plate, from the service Geelvinck/Graafland is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) and illustrated by D. F. Lunsingh Scheurleer in Chinese Export Porcelain, London 1974, fig. 284.

A plate, from the service van Gergen van der Gijp/van Beaumont Cornelis in the Reeves Center Collection is illustrated by Thomas V. Litzenburg, Jr in Chinese Export Porcelain in the Reeves Center Collection at Washington and Lee University (2003, p. 187, no. 183).

A plate, from the service van Gergen van der Gijp/van Beaumont Cornelis is illustrated in the catalogue of the exhibition L’Odyssée de la Porcelaine chinoise (2003, p. 212, no. 164).

A plate is illustrated by Howard in The Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994, p. 82, n° 66.

A plate, from the collection of the British Museum (London) is illustrated by Regina Krahl & Jessica Harrison-Hall in Ancient Chinese Trade Ceramics From The British Museum, pp. 140-143.

A plate, from the collections of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels is illustrated by Jörg in Chinese Export Porcelain from theRoyal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, pl. 78.

A plate, from the collection Cunha Alves, is illustrated in From East to West, the Quest for Chinese Export Porcelaine with Western Themes (1695-1815), p. 128, no. 74.

A charger of the same scene dated 1741 is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated by W. B. Honey, Guide to Later Porcelain, pl.113b.

See also The Chinese Porcelain Company. The Age of Gallantry, Catalogue, 1995, p. 133.

Notice

The arms are those of Nicholas Geelvinck, who later became Mayor of Amsterdam, and Johanna Jacoba Graafland; they married in 1729. This decoration appears on at least six known armorial services, all made for Dutch families. The scene, depicting the wedding of Juno and Hymen with Ceres and Prudence attending, probably derives from a seventeenth century book frontispiece.