Collections Database

Description:
Chinese export porcelain cup (part of a set) decorated en grisaille (or encre de chine or ink color) in black and gilt with a young man with a fishing net over his shoulder holding a large fish and young woman sitting under a tree with a basket of three fish on the ground and holding out a fishing pole and line into a stream with her right hand. The scene was taken from a popular mid 18th century engraving by Joseph Wagner (1706-1780), which was based on a painting by Jacopo Amigoni (1682-1752) titled "Aqua" from his series, "The Four Elements." Wagner studied painting under Amigoni in Venice, who persuaded Wagner to turn his talents to the art of engraving; for the next ten years, Amigoni employed Wagner to engrave designs from his paintings. Wagner became one of the leading mid-18th-century reproductive engravers active in Venice, and later opened a school of engraving and ran a profitable publishing house. According to Hervouet and Bruneau, this scene is also found on tin-glazed earthenware from Marseille. Chinese enamelers developed ink-color decoration as a method of reproducing print images on porcelain for the western market. Dominated by black enamels and washes, ink-color decoration was first produced in the 1730s and remained popular throughout the 18th century. Often period documents refer to this decoration as "pencil'd," reflecting its use of fine brush strokes and black color.

Tags:
fishing

Subjects:
Pottery; Fishing

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+56.444.5

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.