The incised inventory number on the present dish confirms its provenance from the distinguished porcelain collection of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. A discerning connoisseur and ardent patron of the arts, Augustus established one of Europe’s most renowned assemblages of East Asian ceramics, much of which was housed in the Japanisches Palais (“Japanese Palace”) in Dresden. The relevant inventory entry, dated 1779, records: “Fifty differing dishes painted with pagods, stags, trees and flowers. The largest is 2½ in. deep, 18½ in. in diam. No. 183.”
Archival documentation preserved in Dresden indicates that dishes of this type were most probably acquired circa 1727. For a comparable example, see a famille rose “Magu” dish of the Yongzheng period from the same royal collection, bearing the identical inventory number and published in La Maladie de Porcelaine: East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig, 2001, p. 78.
The decoration on the present dish illustrates the theme Magu xianshou (麻姑獻壽), “Magu Presenting Birthday Congratulations.” Magu, the Daoist immortal and revered goddess of longevity, is portrayed journeying to the celestial Peach Banquet hosted by the Queen Mother of the West, ruler of the orchard of the peaches of immortality. The composition is replete with auspicious iconography, lingzhi fungus, deer, blossoming prunus, and peaches, each emblematic of vitality, enduring life, and the transcendence of age.