Page 84 - CHRISTIE'S Marchant Nine Decades of Chinese Art 09/14/17

MARCHANT: NINE DECADES IN CHINESE ART

738 A BLUE AND WHITE ROULEAU VASE

KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)

The vase is decorated in shades of vibrant underglaze blue with a continuous
scene of lone fshermen boating or walking home, and a scholar and
attendant on a rocky promontory, all within a mountainous river landscape.
The neck is decorated with bands of ruyi, key fret and small dots.
17¿ in. (43.5 cm.) high

$50,000-70,000

PROVENANCE

Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856-1927) Collection, 1st Viscount
Cowdray.

Weetman Dickinson Pearson was a famous oil industrialist and owner of
the Pearson Conglomerate, Liberal MP for Colchester (1895-1910), and
a keen philanthropist. In 1909 he purchased Dunecht House, a stately
home of elaborate Gothic and Italianate styles to the west of Aberdeen.
To expand the residence further, Pearson engaged the services of Ashton
Webb, one of the foremost architects of the day whose credits include
the principal façade of Buckingham Palace and the main building of
the Victoria and Albert Museum. Interior furnishings as imposing as the
architecture were required, of which the present vase is a fne example,
and it remained at Dunecht for over a century.

Vases such as the present example are justly celebrated for their vivid
underglaze-blue painting depicting dramatic mountain landscapes. This
style of decoration developed from the 1630s, when the collapse of the
Ming dynasty freed the potters of Jingdezhen from imperial infuence, and
production was instead designed to appeal to the literati class.

One of the foremost developments of this new ‘literati’ style was the
continuous landscape in a restricted palette, designed in direct imitation
of classical scroll painting. The mountain landscape had long enjoyed
particular signifcance as a religious symbol: it represented the home of
the gods; it was a manifestation of qi, the life force, and the source of rain;
and as early as the Zhou dynasty, fve sacred mountains were designated
as holy sites for imperial worship. In the mid-seventeenth century, the
mountain also held cultural resonance for the scholar-offcial, representing
an ideal retreat to a peaceful sanctuary away from political turmoil and
any unwelcome call to offcial duties from a new and foreign power.

The success of this innovative style is clear from its continuation into
the Kangxi period, when the freshness of the design was complemented
by impeccable technique. As Stephen Little notes: “The artistic freedom
enjoyed by ceramic decorators at Jingdezhen in these relatively unsettled
economic conditions gave way to unsurpassed technical skill once imperial
control was re-established at the kilns in 1683, during the early Kangxi
reign” (see Julia B. Curtis, Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century:
Landscapes, Scholars’ Motifs and Narratives, New York, 1995, p. 40).

A vase in the Palace Museum, Beijing, with similar decoration of scholars
in remote mountains, is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of
the Palace Museum - 36 - Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III),
Hong Kong, 2000, p. 19, no. 15.

清康熙 青花山水人物圖棒槌瓶

(additional views)

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