Blue and white Chinese porcelain dish decorated with a lake landscape circa 1800

Chinese work probably executed in Jingdezhen in the late 18th or early 19th century. Decorated in high-fire cobalt blue, depicting a lakeside landscape animated by numerous characters. A peasant leads a buffalo to a bridge. Although this is a porcelain made for export, the workmanship is of the highest quality: the blue is luminous, the paste quite white, the glass velvety, the details show a perfect design carefully executed, the quality is that of imperial porcelain. The shades of blue in the buffalo's coat, for example, are due to a multitude of tiny dots, as in lithographs. This type of technique on porcelain is not only a question of time, but also of the painter's total mastery of his brush. It's unusual to find export porcelain of this quality, but the shape and style of the marli decoration are certainly made for Europe. One chip, on the reverse, left dirty for good visibility, otherwise good condition. We have not been able to find out for whom this service was made, but it was discovered in Italy.