粉彩桃品杯 / Soft Color Porcelain Peach Teacup

Description

Soft color porcelain is another creation of the Qing court, in addition to enamels. It is a powder base containing arsenic on a fired glaze, which is then washed away with a brush to produce a chalky effect due to the emulsification of the arsenic. Soft color porcelain was first created in the Kangxi period and flourished in the Yongzheng period. During the Yongzheng period, the famille rose to maturity and formed a unique style of famille-rose decoration, and during the Qianlong period, famille-rose painting flourished.

Why is the artistic achievement of soft color porcelain painting higher than that of other coloured porcelains? Is there even still no porcelain of higher artistic value than famille rose?

Before soft color porcelain, there were great obstacles in the expression of painting because of the limitations of technology, such as limited and no color gradation, so it was difficult to have variations, while blue and white wanted to be close to ink and wash, but it was difficult to be completely on par with ink and wash painting in terms of painting method, like the chaffing and pointing of landscape painting, which had to be simplified on blue and white.

The pastels, on the other hand, can be painted in more than 20 colours, and the reason why they are called ‘soft colors’ is not the texture, but the color. Compared with the five-color porcelain (hard-colour), pastel porcelain is elegant and soft in tone, so it is called soft-color. It is also because of the richness of the pastel pigments and the many shades, the use of water to wash and dye, to adjust the intensity and shade, and the use of the brush to dab and highlight. Pastel porcelain painting can successfully imitate the transition between the intensity and shade of Chinese painting, the shade to the back, almost reaching the level of Xuan paper flower and bird painting in color.