EDO PERIOD (EARLY 18TH CENTURY)

This design of ‘la Dame au Parasol’ or ‘the Lady with the parasol’ is after one by the Dutch painter Cornelis Pronk, commission by the Dutch East India Company. The surviving drawing can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and was of a Chinese lady and her attendant, as opposed to the Japanese lady seen in this example. The original design is known to have been sent from Batavia to Deshima in 1736 as well as to China in order to be copied onto porcelain. For a discussion of the whole group of Cornelis Pronk designs, and the way in which they were ordered and received by the Hoge Regering at the VOC base in Batavia, see C.P.A. Jorg, Pronk Porcelain (Porcelain after designs by Cornelis Pronk), exhibition catalogue, Groninger Museum (Groningen, 1980). According to Soame Jenyns two of the birds represented are the ruff and the spoonbill and are both natives of Holland.

For the original design by Cornelis Pronk, see Arita VOC, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag et.al., Toji no tozai koryu ten: Arita, Derufuto, Chugoku no sogo eikyo [East-West exchange of ceramics: Mutual influence between Arita, Delft and China], (Saga, 1993), p.103.

For comparison of Chinese and Japanese see Barbara Brennan Ford and Oliver Impey, Japanese Art from the Gerry Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, 1989), p.117, pl.97a-c.

For similar examples see:
Soame Jenyns, Japanese Porcelain,(London, 1965), pl. 46a.
Ashmolean Museum, Eastern Ceramics and other Works of Art from the Collection of Gerald Reitlinger (Oxford, 1981), p. 86, pl.232.
Oliver Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain – Catalogue of The Collection of The Ashmolean Museum Oxford, (Amsterdam, 2002), p.242-243, no.427 and 428. (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
Hayashiya Seizo, Nihon no toji [Japanese ceramics], vol. 8, Ko-Imari (Tokyo, 1975), p. 107, pl. 212.
Nagatake Takeshi, Yabe Yoshiaki, Imari, vol. 19 of Nihon toji taikei [Compendium of Japanese ceramics] (Tokyo, 1989), pl. 48. (Idemitsu Museum of Arts)
Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, Japanese Export Porcelain in Dutch Collections (Amsterdam, 2003), p.253, no.325. (Groninger Museum, Groningen)
Hong Kong Museum of Art, Interaction in Ceramics, Oriental Porcelain and Delftware, (Hong Kong, 1984), p. 130, pl.86.

Similar plates sold at Christie's London, 7 March 1989, lot 376; 17 November 1999, lot 202; 7 June 2000, lot 232; and 18 June 2003, lot 159.