Page 162 - Christies IMportant Chinese Art Sept 26 2020 NYC

The subject of boys at play, which represents the wish instruments and firecrackers, with similar enameling
for fertility and many sons, first gained popularity of the central scene to the present jars, enclosed by
during the Song dynasty, as seen in the work of the underglaze-blue and iron red-enameled floral borders.
court painter Su Hanchen (1094-1172), and woodblock
prints of these paintings may have inspired the later Two Qianlong-marked famille rose jars of globular
renditions of this theme. During the Ming and Qing shape, decorated with a similar scene of sixteen
periods, this motif decorated not only paintings but boys to that seen on the present pair, have also
ceramics and works of art in various materials. By been published: one in the Palace Museum, Beijing,
the later Ming period, the standard number of boys illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of
represented became sixteen, as seen on the present the Palace Museum - 39 - Porcelains with Cloisonné
jars. The same number can be found on a related Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong
Qianlong-marked, lantern-shaped jar in the Shenyang Kong, 1999, p. 106, pl. 92; the other sold at Christie's
Imperial Palace Museum, illustrated in The Prime Hong Kong, 31 May 2017, lot 3030. (Fig. 1)
Cultural Relics Collected by the Shenyang Imperial
Palace Museum - The Chinaware Volume The First Part, The combination of the famille rose central scene
Shenyang, 2008, pp. 164-165, no. 5. The Shenyang enclosed by underglaze-blue and enameled borders on
jar is decorated with a scene of sixteen boys with the present pair is quite unusual, and can also be found
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