A PAIR OF EXTREMELY RARE FAMILLE ROSE 'RECLINING LADIES' EACH VIEWING A PAINTING ALBUM
Qianlong period, circa 1750
Each modelled as a woman reclining against an album of bound books on an artemisia-leaf-shaped flat base, the figures wearing elegant wave-fringed long iron-red coats decorated with gilt chilong roundels and each reading a book or painting album held in their raised left hands, a silk purse and sash removed and lying on the ground alongside them, the beautifully modeled faces and heads separately modeled, inserted and adjustable.
9in (23cm) across (2).
Footnotes:
乾隆時期 約1750年 粉彩描金紅衫《倚書仕女》手持繪本擺飾一對

Published:
Cohen & Cohen, The Golden Gate Collection, Antwerp, 2018, pp. 192-193, no. 141

出版：
倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《The Golden Gate Collection》，安特衛普，2018年，頁192-193，圖版編號141

There appears to be only one other pair recorded of this rare form, also published by Cohen & Cohen, Hit & Myth, Antwerp, 2014-B, pp. 58-59, no. 33. They are linked in style to a few other groups of seated maidens with phoenixes or deer. The books are a literal representation of a Chinese metaphor: Reading a book nourishes the growth of ideas in the mind like a child developing in the womb. Indeed, the unusual depiction of a suggestion of pregnancy in the figures is an unheard-of depiction in Chinese art, especially for the export market. The nonchalantly untied purse and sash that sits alongside the figure are perhaps removed to ease the tightness around their expanding bellies.

Other figures of reclining women, with phoenixes, deer, children and those without books are more commonly found. See, Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China, 2010.