A Chinese Export Porcelain gilt and puce « Batavia » plate. Qianlong

Decorated with natives, Eastern merchants, the god Mercury and a lion before a flag monogrammed V.O.C for the Dutch East India Company, the foreground inscribed ‘BATAVIA’.

Provenance

L. Damon (1860-1947), Paris

Related works

For a discussion of this interesting pattern, which is allegorical of the Dutch East India Co., see Christiaan J. A. Jörg Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, no. 338, p. 290

Carol Rosenberg (ed.), Florianne M. Simons, On Loan from Holland, A Dutch Treat, Selections of XVII and XVIII Century Dutch Art from the Collection of Dr A.C.R. Dreesmann; A Bicentennial Celebration of Relations between the United States and the Netherlands, The Snite Museum of Art, South Bend (IN), 1982, ref. n° 33, p. 66, ill. p. 40;

Catalogue of the Ceramic Road Exhibition, Japan, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, 1982, ref. n° 165 (similar plate);

Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, SDU Staatsdrukkerij- en Uitgeverijbedrijf, The Hague, 1953-2016, 1- 64, vol. 30, n° 4, 1982, The Hague, Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Een Chine de Commande bord met een allegorie op de V.O.C. (for a discussion on this subject).

Exhibited : South Bend (IN), The Snite Museum of Art, On loan from Holland: A Dutch Treat, 17th October 1982 – 26th December 1982, n° 33.His deceased sale, Christie’s Amsterdam, The Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann Collection, Part V, 16th April 2002, lot 1302.

Notice

This allegorical scene personifying the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C) is based on an engraving Jan Punt (1711-1779) made in 1739. It illustrates the long poem Batavia by Jan de Marre, and was published in Amsterdam in 1740. The poem pays tribute to the Dutch East India Company and its government in the East Indies (known as Batavia).

See Christian Joerg, Chinese Ceramics in teh Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1997, p. 290, fig. 338b for the Punt engraving, together with a plate of the same design (NG-1980-11) as the present lot in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.

See Christiaan J. A. Jörg and Jan van Campen, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Ming and Qing Dynasties, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, London, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1997, ill. pl. 338.

Compare plates of the same design illustrated in Michel Beurdeley, Porcelaine de la Compagnie des Indes, Office du livre, Fribourg, 1962, p. 194, pl. 176.

Another example is illustrated in David S. Howard and John Ayers, China for the West, Chinese Porcelain and other Decorative Arts for Export illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, London, Sotheby New York, 1978, 2 vols, vol. 1, p. 200.

François Hervouët, Nicole Hervouët and Yves Bruneau, La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes à Décor Occidental, Flammarion, Paris, 1986, p. 14, pl. 1.5.

Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Chinese Export Porcelain – Chine de Commande from the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, The Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 124, ill. p. 125.