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The "soft enamels," also known as famille rose in the West, entered Chinese porcelain artists' palette in the late seventeenth century. The salient features of this new type of enamels were the infinite shades of colors created by the use of an opaque white pigment derived from lead arsenic and a delicate touch enhanced by the addition of a rose-pink derived from colloidal gold. The newly available spectrum of colors allowed the artists to execute proper paintings on porcelain surface and led to the participation of professional court painters in the ceramic workshop.
The eighteenth century saw the production of the finest examples of porcelain with soft enamel colors. On the surface of many these superb works are scholarly gathering and landscapes that showed the imperial taste for traditional Chinese themes as well as European figures and garden scenes that signified its keen interest in the West.
After its introduction to China in the seventeenth century, painted enamel on copper quickly caught the imagination of the Chinese court. This new technique afforded an artist the freedom to paint on the surface of a vessel as he would on silk or paper, as well as an immensely enlarged palette of delicate, expressive colors. An enameling workshop was set up in the Forbidden City, where European enamellers sent by the Jesuits helped train Chinese craftsmen.
The technique of painted enamels matured and arrived at the peak of its development in the first half of the eighteenth century. During the Qianlong reign (1736–1796), the most influential style was an eclectic example that combined Western figures and pastoral landscapes with Chinese vessel types and floral motifs. A trend to display the most intricate patterns and the richest variety of colors on a single work also developed during this time.