Part 3

Perhaps the greatest glory of the reign are the single-colour and variegated glazes, reviving and excelling the achievements in this direction of the Sung dynasty. Chief among these are the crimson, or “_sang de bœuf_,” and the apple-green associated with the name of Lang T’ing-tso, viceroy during the beginning of the reign of the province of Kiangsi, in which the imperial kilns of Ching-tê-chên are situated; further developments were attained, such as the “peach-bloom,” the “kingfisher” turquoise-blue, and the revived “_clair de lune_,” when in 1683 Ts’ang Ying-hsüan was appointed director of the factories. These wares rank among the most splendid achievements of the potter’s art; in beauty of form and gorgeousness of colour they have never been surpassed, while by their nature they are free from the defect of over-refinement incident to the productions of an age of great technical discoveries, which has been noticed in speaking of the painted porcelain.

Lastly, before passing on to the next reign, a word must be said of the statuettes of divinities and the objects fashioned in the shape of fruit or living creatures, which are another feature of the K’ang Hsi renaissance. Painted generally in the enamel colours of the _famille verte_, these figures are often masterpieces of modelling, instinct with vivacity and expression.

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The short reign of YUNG CHÊNG, who succeeded K’ang Hsi in 1723, witnessed still further advances in the direction of technical perfection, accompanied on the artistic side by a corresponding growth of the tendency to over-refinement. The discovery during the latter years of K’ang Hsi of a rose-coloured enamel derived from gold, varying in shade from pink to crimson, opened the way for a revolution in the colour-scheme which is the chief characteristic of the painted porcelain of Yung Chêng and his successor Ch’ien Lung. From the prevalence of this colour, the type of porcelain on which it occurs received the name of “_famille rose_” among French connoisseurs. The widened range of the enamel-painter’s palette made possible a completely naturalistic manner, in which all conventionalism of treatment was abandoned. No album of flora can show more faithful botanical drawings than are to be seen in such exquisite subjects after nature as that in the piece reproduced in Plate 2; in no work on ornithology could be found truer renderings of bird life. The plate, painted with a bird of the kingfisher family perched on the branch of a gnarled plum-tree in flower, belongs to the collection bequeathed by Mr. W. H. Cope. The spray of blossoming pomegranate which completes the composition is naturally rendered by means of the newly-invented carmine enamel. While we may question the fitness of a subject thus treated for the decoration of a porcelain plate, we cannot but admire the exquisite delicacy of the painting and the skilful arrangement of the composition.

PLATE 12

Toilette-pot and Cover, St. Cloud, about 1700, with ormolu mount of the period. Height, 8¾ in. Given by Mr. J. H. Fitzhenry.

No. C 457-1909. See p. 50.

Mark concealed by the mounting.

Perhaps the most famous of the productions of the Yung Chêng period are the plates and cups and saucers of thin “egg-shell” china with enamel decoration of figure-subjects or birds and flowers enclosed within elaborate borders of complex diaper. The same fine porcelain was employed as a material for lanterns; fine examples of these are exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Concurrently with such technical refinements as these, there came about under Yung Chêng an archaistic revival of ancient wares, resulting from the commission given by the emperor for the reproduction of the ceramic treasures of past centuries preserved in his palaces. Imitations were made both of the shapes and of the numerous varieties of glaze of the factories of the Sung dynasty, while in the “blue and white” category the spotted manner of painting already noticed as characteristic of the reign of Hsüan Tê was specially in favour. Another ancient type extensively reproduced was the “five colour” class of the later Ming emperors. Where there cannot be traced a refinement in the handling of the design foreign to the earlier painters, the copies are readily distinguished from their prototypes by a difference in the quality of the colours employed. The underglaze cobalt-blue has a decidedly violet _nuance_, a delicate lilac replaces the earlier purple, and the green is of a lighter grass-coloured hue; furthermore, the enamel colours often display a faint iridescence where the light glances on them. The vase represented in Plate 9 is a fine example of this archaistic school of the time of Yung Chêng. The shape, of noble simplicity, dates back to the earliest period of the Ming dynasty, but the decoration belongs to the “five colour” type of Wan Li. The design is composed of a dragon and a mythical phœnix (_fêng huang_), emblems of the emperor, amid flowers and foliage of the tree-peony on wavy stems. The breadth of treatment, the vigorous drawing, the masterly balance of the colouring, entitle this vase to a place among the best performances of the Chinese potter.

By the time of the Emperor CH’IEN LUNG, whose reign of sixty years ended in 1795, deteriorating influences made themselves felt with ever-increasing insistence, and the story of Chinese porcelain from this time forward is a record of steady decline. The seeds of decay may be considered to have been planted about the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the establishment of the European trading companies brought China into close and constant touch with the Western world. The new markets thus opened for Chinese products inevitably brought about the creation of a new style in Chinese art to suit the taste of European buyers. Traces of Western influence may be discerned, if not in the decoration, at all events in the forms of Chinese porcelain all through the seventeenth century, and in K’ang Hsi’s reign its effect is fully apparent. The splendid rebirth of art and culture consequent upon the restoration of peace in the empire under his rule availed for a time to check the sinister effect of these changes; but as the eighteenth century advanced, a new class of wares affecting shapes unknown to Oriental customs and designed to meet Western requirements, was produced in ever-increasing quantities, and did not fail to influence the whole output of the Chinese kilns. The commercial spirit thus engendered, hastened the decline already originated by too close attention to the technical side of ceramic craftsmanship. The result is seen in the shapeless extravagances, wonderful in technique, but devoid of grace and beauty, produced in the latter years of Ch’ien Lung, and in the dreary “India china” made for export through the various India companies of Europe. There was a momentary gleam of revival in the nineteenth century under Taou Kuang, when creditable copies were made of some of the Yung Chêng designs, but such imitative efforts do not avail to arouse the interest of those to whom the art of a country ceases to appeal, when it reflects the genius of a people no longer in the full vigour of manhood.

II

JAPANESE PORCELAIN

The subject of Japanese porcelain can only be briefly discussed here, on the one hand in its relation to the Chinese porcelain of which it may be considered an offshoot, and on the other, from the point of view of its influence on European factories. Though the origin of the art in Japan is obscure, it is certain that the Japanese learned the making of porcelain from their neighbours across the sea. Tradition asserts that one Gorodayiu Go Shonsui visited the Chinese factories in 1510 with this purpose, and on his return established a kiln of short-lived duration for the manufacture in his own country. It is not, however, until the beginning of the following century that sure ground is reached; about that time the necessary materials were discovered in the province of Hizen, in the extreme south-west of the island empire, by a Corean potter named Risanpei, and porcelain kilns were set up by him at ARITA, which remains to the present day one of the chief Japanese centres of the industry.

At first only blue and white wares were made, but about 1645 the method of painting in enamel colours over the glaze was learned from a Chinaman by a potter of the Arita factory named Kakiyemon, and the style of decoration associated with him was inaugurated. This style was maintained by more than one generation of the Kakiyemon family, and characterises a quantity of the porcelain exported to Europe through the Dutch merchants established at Deshima, in the outskirts of Nagasaki. As will be seen later, it provided patterns for imitation in many of the earlier European porcelain works; most of the pieces so imitated, as, for instance, the prototype of the Chelsea jar figuring in Plate 23, bear designs of a formal character, showing that they probably do not belong to the earliest work of the Kakiyemon school. A typical example of this later manner is a large jar at South Kensington, painted with a group of figures and trees repeated in three panels, reserved on a close pattern of peony-flowers and foliage; a dish in the Brighton Museum, bearing on the back the name “_Kaki_” in seal characters, shows formal designs painted with extraordinary neatness with a full palette of enamel colours, betokening a still later stage in the development of the style. Charming as these more familiar designs are by reason of their clean drawing and the purity of their colours, they must be regarded as somewhat foreign to the Japanese genius, being the outcome of the effort to please the taste of Western buyers. The purely Japanese manner which may be attributed to the first Kakiyemon is illustrated by some small plates at Kensington from the Bowes Collection; the design is limited to slight floral sprays or a few detached blossoms in three colours only, red, green, and light blue, so as to allow the qualities of the soft white glaze to be fully appreciated.

PLATE 13

Toilette-pot and Cover, Chantilly, about 1735, painted in the style of the Japanese Kakiyemon ware. Silver-gilt mount of the period. Height, 7 in. Given by Mr. J. H. Fitzhenry.

No. C 424-1909. See p. 53.

Mark: a hunting-horn in red.

The baneful influence of contact with the West, already noticed in dealing with Chinese porcelain, did not fail to make itself felt in the work of the Arita potters. From the last quarter of the seventeenth century may be dated the appearance of the ware generally considered in Europe as peculiarly characteristic of Japanese ceramics, but in reality of a type entirely alien from native ideas. Though made at Arita, it is usually called by the name of the neighbouring port of Imari, from which it was exported. The style is embodied in jars and dishes generally of large dimensions, decorated in underglaze blue of muddy tone, with dull red, green, purple and yellow enamels and gilding added at a subsequent firing over the glaze. Their effect is occasionally pleasing and handsome, but in general these objects have a dull and lifeless air that places them among the least interesting of all Oriental wares. This style was sometimes copied both at Meissen and at Chelsea during their earlier stages, and suggested some of the designs of the Worcester factory, but it was not till the first decades of the nineteenth century that it was extensively imitated, when the “Japan patterns” of Derby and the Staffordshire works enjoyed a great popularity; it may fairly be said that in the reduced scale necessitated by their application to table wares, and in the livelier colouring obtainable in the English soft porcelain, these patterns gain an attractiveness wanting in their Oriental forerunners.

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Other kilns were founded in the neighbourhood of Arita under the protection of feudal lords, by whose patronage they were secured from the debasing effects of foreign trade. Porcelain began to be made about 1660 at the kilns of OKAWAJI, founded at an earlier date for making earthenware by a chief of the Nabeshima family. Here the methods of painting employed were those of the later Arita potters, but the colours are purer and the decoration, designed to please native tastes, is at once less florid and more spontaneous in character.

Fine porcelain was made in the second half of the eighteenth century at MIKAWAJI, also in the province of Hizen, under the munificent patronage of the feudal lord of Hirato. The wares are of two principal types. The first is painted in blue of a quiet grey tone with designs of exquisite delicacy, inspired by the Chinese “blue and white” of the time of Hsüan Tê; and it should be noted that this milder quality of blue was deliberately aimed at by the potters of the best Japanese schools, in preference to the deep sapphire blue attained by the Chinese at their highest period of development. The second class of Mikawaji ware is seen in the skilfully modelled figures of divinities, children, or mythical creatures such as the Corean lion; they are usually enlivened with coloured glazes of three harmonious tones, blue, russet-brown, and black.

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Two other Japanese factories remain to be noticed in their relation to Chinese ceramics, in the provinces of Kaga and Kishiu respectively. The kilns at KUTANI in Kaga were established in 1664 and made two distinct classes of ware. One of these is called “_Ao Kutani_,” or green Kutani, from the predominance of green in the colouring, and is characterised by the use of transparent green, yellow, manganese-violet, and blue enamels of great intensity, washed over strong floral or landscape designs drawn in heavy black outline. This type is perfectly exemplified by a fine dish in the series at South Kensington brought together by the Japanese Government in 1876. While it appears to be reminiscent in its methods of the “three colour” class of the Chinese, its artistic character is free from extraneous elements and entirely Japanese in genius. The other type, known _par excellence_ as “_Ko Kutani_,” or old Kutani ware, includes a brilliant red among its colours, and is the ancestor of the red and gold Kaga porcelain of recent times.

PLATE 15

Ewer and Basin, Sèvres, dated 1763, painted with groups of children in the manner of Boucher on a _jaune jonquille_ ground. Mark of the decorator Catrice. Ewer, height, 6-5/8 in.; basin, length, 10¾ in. Jones Collection.

No. 753-1882. See p. 56.

Mark:

The porcelain made in the Nishihama park, near Wakayama in the province of KISHIU, dates only from the earlier years of the nineteenth century, but is of interest as a revival of the early Ming ware with designs in coloured glazes separated by outlines moulded in slight relief; the enamels of the Kishiu kilns produce a wonderful richness of effect, notably where turquoise blue is used in combination with deep violet.

III

ITALIAN PORCELAIN

PLATE 16

Écuelle, with Cover and Stand, Sèvres, dated 1768, with pastoral subjects after Boucher, by Chabry, on a turquoise-blue ground. Écuelle, height, 4½ in.; stand, diameter, 4¾ in. Jones Collection.

No. 758-1882. See p. 57.

Mark:

The manufacture of porcelain in Europe has a history of very recent origin when compared with the long story of its invention and development in the land of its birth, but what it lacks in antiquity is atoned for by the interest and diversity of the vicissitudes through which it has passed. We can never know at what period and by whose agency the mysterious substance was first brought into Western lands. From the earliest records that can rightly be supposed to refer to it, we gather that the rare vessels of porcelain which found their way from China in the Middle Ages were regarded with superstitious wonder as the work of superhuman hands, to be treasured as jealously as gold or precious stones. How to rival this ware of pure white surface and translucent substance may well have been the problem that many a potter of those days attempted to solve, but it must have been the despair of the rudely-trained craftsmen whose hands shaped the rough stone-wares of the Rhineland, or the lead-glazed slip-wares, with their artless scratched or moulded designs, of mediæval France and Italy. The road to success was first opened by the potters of the last-named country. The Italian tin-enamelled maiolica, which attained its full development at the end of the fifteenth century, marks the first pronounced step in the advance. It derived its inspiration in the first instance not immediately from Chinese porcelain, but indirectly through the painted earthenware of the Near East and of the Moors in Spain, which was itself evolved in emulation of the Chinese wares. By the early years of the sixteenth century, the latter must have been quite familiar to the Italian maiolica potters, who used the term “_alla porcellana_” to denote a certain type of design in which they sought to imitate the contemporary Oriental “blue and white.”

The mere outward simulation that could be achieved by coating grey earthenware with pure white enamel did not satisfy the keen spirits of an age when every mind was pregnant with new ideas, and no task seemed too gigantic for the artist’s hand. To produce a body which, in substance and surface as well, should equal the object of imitation, must have been the aim of many a pioneer in the art of whose efforts all record has been lost.

If contemporary documents are to be trusted, it would appear that something in the nature of porcelain was made in Italy as early as the first quarter of the sixteenth century; it is not surprising to learn that the scene of the first successful experiments was Venice, a city by that time famous all over Europe for its glass, a substance for the manufacture of which its seaboard situation gave it exceptional advantages. Though the literary evidences for the fabrication are too clear to be reasonably doubted, no piece of this early Venetian porcelain is known to exist at the present day. We reach sure ground towards the end of the century, when we come to the porcelain invented at FLORENCE about 1575 by Francesco de’ Medici, the second Grand Duke of Tuscany. This, the earliest European porcelain of which specimens still survive, is an imperfect artificial porcelain largely compounded of glass. It is mentioned in a letter dated 1576 by the Venetian ambassador at the Tuscan Court. The only dated specimen known is a flask with the arms of Philip II. of Spain and the date 1581, now in the museum at Sèvres. The Grand Duke probably ceased after a short time to take interest in the factory, and it became a private enterprise; of its subsequent fortunes something will be said on a later page.

PLATE 14

Jardinière, Sèvres, dated 1761, painted with cupids on a _rose Pompadour_ ground. Mark of the decorator Dubois. Height, 7½ in. Jones Collection.

No. 787-1882. See p. 56.

Mark:

While as regards material the object of emulation was Chinese porcelain, the forms affected by the Medici porcelain show little indication of extraneous influence. By their variety and by the gracefulness of many they bear witness to the taste and inventiveness of the ducal patron, who interested himself personally in the processes of fabrication and was doubtless in artistic matters the guiding spirit of the works. The decoration, painted in cobalt-blue usually of rather dull tone, either alone or outlined with pale manganese-violet, is of two distinct styles. One of these is made up of grotesques of the kind familiar in the later maiolica of the Urbino school. The other style is marked by Oriental motives, derived in some cases from Chinese, but more often from Near Eastern sources. The designs are never mere copies, but rather interpretations of their prototypes; often indeed they betray only slight traces of the inspiration to which they are due.

The last-named class of design is well exemplified by the bottle in Plate 10, one of the four pieces of Medici porcelain belonging to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The subtle shapeliness of the modelling and the ably-distributed painted ornament, in which a slight suggestion of the contemporary Chinese “blue and white” of Wan Li is perceptible, betoken the work of an artist whose conceptions were superior to the material at his disposal for their embodiment.

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From the scanty documents that remain, it would appear that the venture of Francesco de’ Medici was abandoned for a time, and that his successor Ferdinand I. summoned to Florence one Niccolò Sisti for the purpose of re-establishing there the manufacture of porcelain. The kilns were later removed to PISA, and a document exists to prove that in 1620 Sisti received monetary aid for his work from the then-reigning Grand Duke, Cosmo II. In the light of these records, meagre as they are, the greatest interest attaches to the little bowl figuring in Plate 11, one of the most precious documentary pieces of porcelain in the South Kensington collections; it was formerly in the possession of Mr. Henry Griffith and later belonged to Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, on whose death it was acquired for the Museum. This bowl is of remarkably thin material, light to handle, and shows a somewhat yellow tone in the paste by transmitted light. The design painted round the outside consists of four alternate sprays of hyacinth and lily, separated by flowers resembling scabious or cornflower branching from a curved serrated leaf; these motives are obviously borrowed from the Turkish earthenware of the period. In a medallion inside the bowl is a view of a city with a domed building; on the bottom are the initials “G. G. P. F.” and the date 1638.

The only other piece hitherto identified as belonging to the same kind is another bowl, in the collection of Mr. Montague Yeats Brown. Like its companion, it is light in weight and thin in the walls. It is decorated round the sides externally and internally with a frieze of birds perched upon rocks; inside is a medallion with a group of ruins among trees, curiously anticipating the fanciful compositions seen on Worcester and Bow china of the eighteenth century. In the painting there appear in addition to cobalt-blue two colours of common occurrence in the maiolica of the Urbino school, a strong brownish-orange and a greenish-blue derived from copper, the latter much blurred in the firing. This bowl also bears a signature and date, “I. G. P. F. 1627”, and it is of extreme interest to observe that both bowls are marked with the same devices, a cross potent and a curious aggregation of strokes, of which the significance is difficult to determine; evidently these signs are the distinctive mark of the factory. The meaning of the initials is also uncertain, but in view of the known existence of the Sisti factory at Pisa a few years before the date on the earlier bowl, it may be conjectured that the last letters “P. F.”, occurring in both signatures alike, stand for “_Pisanus fecit_” or “_Pisano fece_”; if that be so, the preceding “G” may indicate the family name of the potters who took over from Sisti the secret of porcelain making, while the “I” and the first “G” respectively refer to the baptismal names of different members of the family. Be this as it may, these two bowls, unique in the nature of their paste and decoration and by reason of the dates they bear, are of the utmost interest as isolated landmarks in the history of European porcelain, standing midway between the production of Francesco de’ Medici and the earliest French achievements.