38. IMPORTANT ET TRÈS GRAND PLAT EN PORCELAINE ÉMAILLÉE VERTE ET AUBERGINE SUR FOND JAUNE Époque Guangxu（1875-1908), marque Chuxiu Gong A MASSIVE YELLOW-GROUND GREEN AND AUBERGINE-ENAMELED 'DRAGON' CHARGER Guangxu period, Chuxiu Gong mark Sturdily potted with rounded sides rising from a tapered foot to a wide rim, boldly incised and painted to the interior with a sinuous green and an aubergine five-clawed dragon moving agitatedly amidst wisps of clouds and flames while contesting a flaming pearl, the cavetto decorated with flowering sprays and branches of lotus, camelia, peony, peach, prunus, chrysanthemum and hydrangea, similarly decorated on the exterior with four striding dragons pursuing flaming pearls, all reserved on a bright yellow ground, the base glazed white and inscribed with a four-character seal mark in underglaze blue Chuxiu Gong zhi (Made in the Hall of Gathered Elegance). 63.8cm (25 1/8in) diam. 清光緒 黃地紫綠彩雙龍戲珠紋大盤 「儲秀宮製」款 Provenance: Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz (1843-1916) Rudolf Bangel, Frankfurt, 9 and 10 October 1917, lot 174, pl.VI 來源： Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz（1843-1916）珍藏 Rudolf Bangel拍賣行，法蘭克福，1917年10月9至10日，編號174，圖版VI The Chuxiu Gong (Palace of Gathering Elegance) is one of the six Western palaces in the Forbidden City, favored by the Empress Dowager Cixi whose chief residence it became between 1856 and 1885. The Empress Dowager had the palace refurbished on the occasion of her 50th birthday in 1884, furnishing it with luxurious objects, many of them of large or even monumental size and modeled after prototypes from the Kangxi period such as the dish, compare, for instance a Kangxi dish of this type, published in Illustrated Catalogue of Ching Dynasty Porcelain in the National Palace Museum, Tokyo, 1980, vol.1, pl.34. A large with a Chuxiu Gong zhi mark, from the collection of Simon Kwan, is illustrated in Imperial Porcelain of Late Qing: From the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong, 1983, cat.no.96 and p.154. Compare also with a charger of this type, illustrated in Georg Weishaupt, The Great Fortune. Chinese and Japanese Porcelain of the 19th and 20th Centuries and their Forerunners, Stuttgart, 2003, pl.28.