Qianlong Period, Qing Dynasty 附图 5:台北故宫博物院藏,南宋马远绘《倚云仙杏图》 AN EXTREMELY AND SUPERBLY ENAMELLED 附图 6: 附图 7: 'LOTUS AND SWALLOW' BOWL 美国克利夫兰艺术博物馆藏, 清宫廷画家郎世宁绘 南宋牧溪绘《莲燕图》 《弘历观荷抚琴图》[局部图] During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was very popular to decorate auspicious patterns on porcelain. The decoration in Jingdezhen Royal Porcelain must be satisfactory and auspicious. The bowl delicately potted with a flared rim and rising from a short, straight foot, and decorated on the exterior with brilliant transparent enamels, and painted with flowers and garden stones. The painting idea and the pattern are perfectly combined, it would be a perfect expression for the artists' skills. The details of the design are exquisite has its own modality. It seems that a picture of spring in the clear sky is slowly unfolded in front of us, and the two swallows play and dance, rendering in a bright spring. There is another Qianlong bowl (pl.1) in the Palace Museum, Beijing, which has the same shape, decoration, mark, should be a pair with the present one. Besides, the emperor Yongzheng also loves the porcelains decoration with swallows, two pairs enamelled swallow bowls of Yongzheng period holds by the Taipei Palace Museum. Moreover, a Qianlong enamelled swallow bowl (pl.4) is one of the collections of Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, which should be a pair with other bowl which sold at HKD.151,320,000 in the Sotheby’s fall sales, lot 1309. In comparison, The bowls of Yongzheng period collected by the Taipei Palace Museum have more characteristics of the times and are more in line with the artistic taste and cultivation of the Yongzheng emperor. Although the painting subjects are the same, the paintings are slightly or completely different. In contrast, most of the pieces of the Qianlong period have the same patterns and designs. In addition, this present bowl is more relevant to the apricot flowers painted in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing. Looking at this exquisite artwork, the patterns painted are the best interpretation of the flower and bird hand scrolls that have attracted the attention of the courts in previous dynasties. It can be seen that the painters have excellent taste on material selection. The emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty believed in Taoism and observed nature in detail. He once ordered people to compile his paintings into Xuanhe painting manual, which included 6396 works from the Three Kingdoms to the Song Dynasty, and 2786 flower and bird paintings. It can be seen that Huizong loved flower and bird paintings. The painting of 'apricots and leaning on clouds' (attached Fig. 5), painted by Ma Yuan, a painter of the Southern Song Dynasty painting royal academy, collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, is beautiful and refined. It is consistent with the style of apricot flowers depicted with the painting on this bowl. There is a painting of lotus swallows by Mu Xi, created by a painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, collected in the Cleveland Art Museum of the United States (Fig. 6), shows that the matching theme of spring swallows and lotus ponds which has long been popular, and the shape and trend of flying swallows, lotus flowers and lotus leaves are similar to the patterns of this instrument, lifelike and flexible. The lotus flowers and lotus leaves in the painting of lotus playing in Hongli view (attached Fig. 7), painted by Lang shining, a famous court painter in the Qing Dynasty, are light and elegant, and the coloring