In 1734 the directors of Holland’s VOC commissioned Amsterdam artist Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759) to create four patterns for Chinese porcelain. Pronk’s drawings were sent to VOC headquarters in Batavia (later Java) and then on to Canton in 1736; two survive today in the Rijksmuseum. With a Chinoiserie vocabulary Pronk created distinctive scenes and motifs that were then produced by the Chinese workshops in differing quantities of famille rose enamels, blue and white and ‘Chinese Imari’.

The first and best-known of the Pronk patterns is known as ‘La Dame au Parasol’, showing a lady shaded by her maid as she feeds waterbirds.