A CHINESE FAMILLE ROSE TEAPOT AND COVER DEPICTING ‘THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS’

Of globular form, with a straight spout, c-shaped handle and domed cover with a bud finial, painted on either side with Paris seated wearing a puce robe, with a small dog beside him, and offering a green object to Aphrodite who is flanked by Hera and Athena, and with Cupid looking on, Hera and Aphrodite only covered by either a shawl or a fan, Athena dressed in long iron-red and yellow robes, at their feet a bird, pine trees enclosing the scene, the cover with birds in flight, a similar large bird and pine and finished with a bud finial, the base glazed.

Period: Qianlong 1736-1795

Footnote: This is the most popular European design on Chinese porcelain of the 1740s and there are at least six different variations. The scene depicts King Priam’s son Paris judging who of the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite was the most beautiful - he chooses Aphrodite by handing her an apple.

A very similar example of a teapot is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, illustrated in William R. Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics – From the Peabody Essex Museum, 2012. Other forms but with the same mythological motif include a barber’s bowl from Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, MA (illustrated by Lange 2005, 165, no. 52); a dish from Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm, (illustrated in Wirgin 1998, 187, no. 201), a plate in the Victoria and Albert Museum (C.342-1931), London (illustrated in Kerr and Mengoni 2011, 71, no. 93). For further examples decorated with this scene see Scheurleer, Chinese Export Porcelain, illus. 225, 226; Beurdeley, Porcelain of the East India Company, Cat. 31, 130; Howard & Ayers, China for the West, p.329. For a plate with the same scene see Lloyd Hyde, Oriental Lowestoft (New York, 1936), pl. XIV, p.43 and Beurdeley, Cats 31, 130, 131. See also Anita Gray, Catalogue of Oriental Ceramics and Works of Art, pl.97b, p.67.

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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