A SUPERB FAMILLE-VERTE 'GOLDEN PHEASANT' YENYEN VASE
Kangxi period
Superbly painted in bright enamels in two wide panels to the neck and body, the tall neck with flaring rim centered by a continuous scene of a pair of golden pheasants standing amidst geometric rock work and large full peony flower heads and leafy branches, the high-shouldered body with two birds in flight descending to further geometric rock work and large full peony flower heads and leafy branches, all divided by a simple cell and flower band and bordered at the foot by iron red diaper band and with classic scroll at the rim, a double circle mark to the base.
18in (45.7cm) high
Footnotes:
清康熙時期 五彩鳳凰花卉紋鳳尾尊

Vases of this form and size include one depicting a scene of birds amongst flowers from the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, that sold at Christie's New York, 6 June 1985, lot 406; another depicting lotus flowers, illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong. Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. 53, pl. 36, and one illustrated by Toru Nakano, The Panoramic Views of Chinese Patterns, Tokyo, 1985, pl. 142

For a larger example of the same shape and also painted with golden pheasants on rockwork, see Mayuyama, Seventy Years, Volume One, Tokyo, 1976, p. 344, no. 1032.

Related bird and flower designs are also known on yenyen vases of this size in underglaze blue; one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qing Shunzhi Kangxi Chao Qinghua Ci, Bejing, 2005, pl. 305; and another in the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, published in Kangxi Porcelain Wares, Hong Kong, 1998, pl. 68-1.

Birds painted in pairs suggest that this may have been presented on the occasion of a marriage.

See Sotheby's Hong Kong, 9 October 2012, lot 3066, for an identically-sized example with bird and floral decoration but differing in the placement of the birds with the golden pheasants painted to the body and the paired birds above.