A rare doucai 'floral bouquet' bowl


Qianlong seal mark and of the periodDelicately potted with deep rounded sides rising from a short straight foot to a slightly everted rim, the exterior finely enamelled with blossoming floral sprays encircled by an elaborate and dense chains of interlocking C-scroll vines, all below a band of trefoils around the rim, the interior enamelled with a roundel of aster and leafy sprigs in vivid tones of red, blue, yellow, green and aubergine. 15.3cm (6in) diam.
|清乾隆 鬥彩花卉貫套紋盌青花「大清乾隆年製」篆書款Provenance: Thomas Torrance (1871–1959), and thence by descent來源：陶然士（1871-1959）收藏，並由後人保存迄今Thomas Torrance, born in Shotts, Scotland, was a Protestant missionary who went to China in 1895. He was first sent to Chengdu by the China Inland Mission (CIM) and stayed in Western Sichuan from 1896 to 1910. He left for Scotland in 1910 but returned to Sichuan with the American Bible Society shortly after. He married Annie Elizabeth Sharp (1883–1980) of the CIM in 1911. Whilst travelling deep into Sichuan and the foothills of the Himalayas, he came across the Qiang people, about whom he wrote extensively and whom he believed to belong to the Lost Tribes of Israel; the Selected Works of Thomas Torrance, Chengdu, 2016, p.234. He was also instrumental in establishing the West China Union University Archaeological Museum. He finally left China in 1934 to return to Scotland.The ornate and lively pattern found on the present lot was originally designed during the Yongzheng period and reproduced by successive Qing emperors. See two Yongzheng prototypes in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, pls.224-25.Compare with a similar doucai bowl, Qianlong seal mark and of the period, which was sold at Bonhams San Francisco, 16 December 2014, lot 8334.