Decorated with pheasants on rockery amidst flowering trees and plants. All finely painted in bright enamels against a black ground.
Height: 17 inches (43.2 cm.)
With base: 19 ¼ inches (49 cm.)
Ex Collection: John D. Rockefeller, Jr.(Acquired from Parish Watson and Frank Partridge, New York and London, 1927)
Ex Collection: Herbert Stern, First Baron Michelham (1851-1919)
Ex: Collection: Prince de Bearn (1887) with label to the underfoot with date.
Mounted upon custom carved and fitted “Rockefeller” wood bases.
Exhibited: Chinese Black Hawthorn Porcelains, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, 1963, No. 6.
A complementary vase and cover with this decoration is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Salting Collection) and was the first object of Chinese porcelain that Salting acquired from Mr. Lindo Myers in 1869 or 1870, who acquired it in Paris. Another very similar beaker vase from the Benjamin Altman Collection is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
NOTE: Famille noire porcelains were among the most prized and costly Chinese decorative art in the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Reflecting this, it was posited by Pope and others in the 1970s that many (or even all) of the large examples were 19th century pieces or redecorated Kangxi vases, all made or adjusted to meet the market demand of that time. More recent scholarship has reexamined and challenged this blanket dismissal. This is based upon decorative styles, historic records, and established old provenances of some pieces to the latter 1800’s such as these that predate the collecting craze and exuberant prices.
See: Accompanying photograph of John D. Rockefeller’s home at 10 West 54th Street from 1936 showing the vases on a mantel.
