Located in Downingtown, PA
Chinese Export Porcelain Sailor’s Farewell & Return Punch Bowl, Royal Navy Ship
This Chinese export porcelain punch bowl was painted in famille rose enamels for the English market with the paired subjects known as The Sailor’s Farewell and The Sailor’s Return, one on either side of the exterior, the two scenes divided by large flowering branches of chrysanthemum and prunus in iron-red, rose and turquoise. The bowl is of deep rounded form on a short straight foot ring, the interior plain but for a spray of the same flowering branches in the well and a narrow border at the rim, so that the two figure subjects carry the whole of the decoration and can be read in turn as the bowl is passed around a table.
In the Farewell, a couple stand embracing on a rocky shore, the man in a black tricorn and blue coat, the woman in a striped bodice and full orange-yellow skirt, his free arm thrown out to point across the water at the ship that will carry him away. She is a three-masted vessel lying close inshore, her hull and rigging drawn in iron-red and fine grey-black line, her sails left in reserve and outlined only, with red streamers at the mastheads and a blue ensign with the union in the canton at the stern. The sea is drawn as a band of fine wave lines washing over a green shoal, with a rocky islet and dark blue-green scrub at the water’s edge.
In the Return, the same couple stand on a rocky ground scattered with blue-green shrubs, the man now facing his sweetheart across the fortune he has brought home. He wears a black tricorn edged in gilt over a powdered wig, a white cravat, a blue coat lined in puce with wide turned-back cuffs, a striped waistcoat bordered in yellow, an embroidered belt in brown and turquoise, orange-red breeches and white stockings, and he carries a long slender cane with a sword hanging behind him. From his raised right hand, the wrist deep in lace, he dangles a gold pocket watch by its chain over the green apron the woman holds up between them; in the apron lie some ten gold coins and a dark purse studded with gold. She wears a lace-edged cap with blue and yellow lappets, a coral bead necklace, a white stomacher, a yellow jacket with a green shawl and a full ribbed puce skirt, and in her right hand she holds a red flower. Both figures are dressed as gentlefolk rather than as seafarers, which is usual on bowls of this class, the compositions having been copied at Canton from European genre prints rather than drawn from life.
The rim is finished with a gilt line at the edge, and inside it a narrow border of pendant trefoils in iron-red with dotted terminals hangs from a second gilt line, the only border on the piece.
The flags repay a second look. From 1707 until 1864 the Royal Navy was divided into red, white and blue squadrons, each wearing an ensign of its own color, while British merchantmen wore the red; the blue ensign here therefore marks the vessel as a naval one rather than an East Indiaman, and it is that identification which sets this bowl apart from the more commonly encountered versions flying the striped ensign of the East India Company. The Sailor’s Farewell and The Sailor’s Return were among the most widely circulated of English popular subjects through the eighteenth century, sustained by ballad and by cheap print, and a customer placing an order at Canton sent out the engraving for the Chinese painters to copy, color for color, from an image whose language they could not read.
Dimensions
Diameter: 10¼ inches (26.0 cm)
Height: 4½ inches (11.4 cm)
Marks
None. Chinese export porcelain painted to European order in this period is characteristically unmarked.
Provenance
Elinor Gordon, Villanova, Pennsylvania
Collection of Roy and Ruth Nutt
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge
Condition
Very good, with some fading to the grey-black line work of the ship’s sails and rigging, light wear to the gilt at the rim, a few dark firing specks in the glaze and light soiling to the unglazed foot rim. No cracks, chips or restoration.
References
David S...
Category
1760s Chinese Export Antique Chinese Serveware, Ceramics, Silver and Glass
