24.5CM Ca 1740 Chinese porcelain Commande Dish CORNELIS PRONK ‘Arbour’ Pattern

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Condition Report: Some loss of the paint, a flake, a chip with associated hairline and tree other hairlines. Size 24.5CM Diameter

A Chinese Export Porcelain saucer dish after the ‘Arbour’ design by Cornelis Pronk (1691 – 1759) commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or V.O.C.) in 1737. This design is mentioned in the V.O.C. archives, it is perhaps his fourth design for the company. The border contains elements copied from Maria Sybilla Merian’s Erucarum Ortus.

This Chinoiserie design shows two Chinese ladies, one seated by a table the other holding a flower under a European leafy arbour with climbing roses. Outside the arbour to the left three Chinese boys, to the right one Chinese boy appears from behind the arbour. Around the arbour is a garden with two birds perched in a tree on one side and a flowering rose on the other. In the foreground two ducks on a pond.

On the rim twelve oval cartouches containing alternately butterflies, fruit, and flowers, reserved on a square-diaper underglaze blue ground. The fours insects in the rim are taken from Maria Sybilla Merian’s Erucarum Ortus, published in full in 1718, and in an enlarged Dutch edition, European Insects, 1730. Between the cartouches, there are feather plumes along the inner edge and shells at the outer edge. On the reverse around the rim tasselled lappets in underglaze blue.

These dishes are well know to be displayed in museums, like here:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/207481

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