A RARE AND POSSIBLY UNIQUE GRISAILLE AND FAMILLE ROSE RECTANGULAR PENBOX AND HINGED COVER Qianlong period, circa 1740 The exterior of the cover is brilliantly painted in grisaille with gilt highlights with a large oval leafy scroll cartouche crested by a cherub (angel head with wings) with a two-masted sailing ship in a blustery wavy sea below dark scudding clouds and two ships in the distance, the interior, however, has an opposing view of a calm pearl river with a junk plying the waters and approached by two figures, possibly Europeans, in a small craft leaving a tree-lined shore with hilly backdrop, the exterior sides and the underside of the elongated octagonal rectangular box painted with colorful enamel composite flower groupings of peony, chrysanthemum and others and single loose sprays, all floating on a grisaille painted dense honeycomb cell ground, the box interior plain. 6in (15cm) across Footnotes: 乾隆時期 約1740年 墨彩粉彩錦地開光航海圖連蓋長方筆盒 Published Cohen & Cohen, The Elephant in the Room, Antwerp, 2019, pp. 32-33, no. 13 出版： 倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《The Elephant in the Room》，安特衛普，2019年，頁32-33，圖版編號13 This carefully spaced scene of ships at sea was copied from a contemporaneous European print, and the Chinese version imitates the engraved lines of the original source, echoing the similar treatment of an engraved print source on whalebone carvings ('scrimshaw'). The lid and base are joined by a European silver hinged mount. Very few examples of this form of penbox (rather than the much commoner snuffboxes) are recorded in the literature about Chinese export porcelain. Copying Western prints as grisaille decoration onto Chinese porcelain seems to have been especially popular during a relatively short period around the middle of the 18th century, possibly related to the emergence of a less flamboyant taste in Europe for Neo-classical decoration as a result of the publication of Roman archaeological finds at Pompeii and Herculaneum. References: Cohen & Cohen, 2013, no. 51, a similar penbox with Mughal subject and an interior scene, Le Belle Villageoise, after Boucher.