Four Covered Jars with Blue and White Decoration

Beginning in the early eighteenth century, jars with plum-blossom decoration were made in China for export to Europe, where they were sought by early collectors of Chinese porcelain, among them, Augustus the Strong. The art dealer Henry Duveen acquired this jar and three similar jars (1915.8.02-04) in the late nineteenth century: the first in 1886, in England, at the Duke of Marlborough’s celebrated Blenheim Palace sale; the second in 1891, in New York, at the sale of the important collection formed by General Brayton Ives; the third in Paris from the art dealer Siegfried Bing; and the last in New York at the American Art Gallery. In the late 1890s, Henry Duveen sold the set to the preeminent American collector James Garland but bought it back in 1902 following Garland’s death (along with the rest of the Garland collection of Chinese porcelain). Duveen sold the set immediately to J. Pierpont Morgan but pur­chased it back after Morgan’s death in 1913. With his nephew, legendary art dealer Joseph Duveen, he sold it a final time to Henry Clay Frick in 1915 for the high price of $80,000.

Source: Vignon, Charlotte. The Frick Collection Decorative Arts Handbook. New York: The Frick Collection/Scala, 2015.