Beschreibung:

A FINE FAMILLE-ROSE 'CHICKEN AND BOY' CUPQianlong fang gu seal mark, Qing Dynasty-Republic Period
The deep, straight sides incurving at the lower body and smoothly transitioning to the footring, one side of the exterior finely painted with a young boy in a garden approaching a rooster, the child dressed in a lavender robe and white trousers with his eyes fixed on the bird and the arms extending to seize it, the yellow, orange, and black rooster staring down the prospective captor, brilliant blue rockwork and blossoming red and pink peonies framing the scene, the opposite side with a black-enameled 126-character imperial poem followed by Qianlong bingshen yuti (made in the bingshen year of the Qianlong reign (1776) by imperial command), and two iron-red seal marks reading san (three) and Qian (Qian[long]), below the poem a brown and white hen corralling her four chicks, the base with the six-character Da Qing Qianlong fang gu (Exemplifying antiquity during the Qianlong reign of the Great Qing dynasty) seal mark in underglaze blue, custom fabric stand, custom Japanese wood box.
2 5/8in (6.7cm) highFootnotes《大清乾隆仿古》篆書款 丙申年題 粉彩題詩雞缸盃
Provenance:
Eugene Y.C. Sung Collection, Ohio and New York
來源：
Eugene Y.C. Sung藏，俄亥俄州、紐約州
The motif on the present cup is inspired by the doucai 'Chicken' cups first produced during the Chenghua reign (1464-1487) and later revived under the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722) and further popularized by the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1796) who deeply revered the artistic accomplishments of earlier periods. He actively studied existing artworks and sought to celebrate them through reinterpreting their styles in modern works and composing poems lauding their virtues. The present cup embodies these expressions of appreciation by borrowing the centuries' old tradition of the 'chicken' cup, executing it with fine famille-rose enamels, elongating the silhouette of the vessel, and adding a precocious young boy and the emperor's own poem to the composition. The poem describes the emperor's admiration for antiquity and identifies the boy on the cup as Jia Chang (b. AD 713), a child prodigy who began training at the age of thirteen to fight cocks for the Xuanzong emperor (713-756). The child is painted on tiptoe, possibly to form the rebus qiao zu er dai, meaning 'to expect something to be soon forthcoming'.
Examples of the antecedents of these 'Boy and Chicken' cups that also bear the Qianlong fang gu seal mark are preserved in a number of major museum collections, including one in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C., exhibited and published in Joined Colors, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., 1993, cat. no. 64; one from the Percival David Foundation, now in the British Museum, London, exhibited and published in For the Imperial Court: Qing Porcelain from the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1997, cat. no. 33; and a pair of cups in the Palace Museum, Taiwan, exhibited and published in the Special Exhibition of K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch'ien-lung Porcelain Ware from the Ch'ing Dynasty in the Palace Museum, Taipei, 1986, cat. no. 144. A cup of this type was also loaned by the Chinese government to the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy, London, 1935, cat. no. 2155.
The type of Qianlong cup, upon which our example must be based, have come on the market in recent years, including one from the collection of Dr. Wou Kiuan that sold at Sotheby's, New York, 22 March 2022, lot 81; another in the same rooms, 20 March 2019, lot 525; a third sold at Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 6 April 2016, lot 3622; another at Christie's, New York, 19 September 2014, lot 962; and a fifth example sold at Christie's, London, 4 November 2008, lot 222.