Page 199 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

fig. 1
Blue and white ‘Romance of the Western Chamber’ jar,
Yuan dynasty
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 5th November 1996, lot 740,
currently in the Au Bak Ling collection
the Eumorfopoulos collection with a similar scene
as the last jar, illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, impression of opulence. Similar ornamentation
Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London,
2001, pl. 16: 17; and another depicting the Eight
Immortals, sold in these rooms, 29th April 1997,
lot 512, and published in Ye Peilan, op.cit., pl. 445
A. Remains of a ewer with a figure design have
been excavated at one of the most important
Longquan kiln sites at Dayao, see Longquan
Dayao Fengdongyan yaozhi chutu ciqi [Porcelains
excavated from the Fengdongyan kiln site at
Dayao, Longquan], Beijing, 2009, pl. 166.
None of these pieces show the distinctive
high-relief carving style and fine glossy glaze
of the present piece, which is closer in style
to a celadon jar in Germany, decorated with a
garden scenery with fruiting and flower plants, a
banana plant and rockwork, but without figures,
included in the exhibition Feuergeburten. Frühe
chinesische Keramik im mak.frankfurt, Museum
für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2002,
cat. no. 211 (fig. 2).
The cover of the present jar, with its combination
of auspicious emblems and applied bosses
indicating jewel-and-pearl encrustations, is totally
fig. 2
Lonquan celadon ‘garden’ jar, Yuan dynasty
© Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
matchless in design and admirably conveys an
of jewels enclosed by pearl boarders are often
depicted in paintings embellishing the attire of
Buddhist and Daoist deities; see, for example,
the crown of a Daoist deity and the hair pieces
of a female attendant in a twelfth/thirteenth-
century scroll painting in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, included in the exhibition The World
of Khubilai Khan. Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
2010, catalogue fig. 162c.
One covered jar is recorded, probably decorated
with a male version of the Four Scholarly
Accomplishments, but rendered in a much
simplified manner, each scene confined in a
panel, lacking the lush garden scenery, and the
cover carved in low relief with Chinese characters,
with a lion knob that was left in the biscuit; the jar
formerly in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection and
later in the University Museum of the University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, was sold in our
London rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 239, and
included in the inaugural exhibition Matsuoka
Bijutsukan meihin zuroku/Selected Masterpieces
of the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Matsuoka
Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1975, cat. no. 69.
IMPORTANT CHINESE ART 197