This baluster vase is decorated with colorful enamels of four figures in Chinese-inspired outfit, three of whom are seated in the grass around a table, observing a fish. The fourth figure stands in the background, supervising them. The vase’s rim is decorated with a spring landscape, branches and flowers, a peacock and a crane. It rests on a foot decorated with scales.

It is a design by Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), a Dutch portraitist and topographer commissioned in 1734 by the Dutch East India Company to make porcelain models and order them to China. The “Four Doctors” is Cornelis Pronk’s second drawing for China, similar to the third, which features only three doctors. Although intended for export, it is likely that this design was inspired by a Chinese iconography of Taoists playing the game of go, brought into Western taste.

See the history of the vase in Pronk Porcelain, Porcelain after designs by Cornelis Pronk, C.J.A. Jörg, N. 41