Page 129 - Bonham's Asian Art London November 12, 2015

137 Large vases such as this, filled with immortality motifs, would have
A PAIR OF LARGE WUCAI JARS AND COVERS been appropriate as gifts for birthday celebrations. Xiwangmu is the
Shunzhi earliest recorded goddess in the Chinese pantheon. Her cult became
The jars of baluster form painted in mirror image with a garden scene increasingly popular, especially during the Han dynasty, when she
depicting the preparation of the Peach Banquet for the Queen Mother became associated with dispensing longevity, probably, as a response
of the West, wearing flowing robes and holding a ruyi sceptre, flanked to the growing interest in Daoism and its relation to the attainment of
by a phoenix, surrounded by a group of female musicians and other immortality at the time. When the peaches growing in Xiwangmu’s
maids gathering together the peaches of immortality, followed by land ripened, the deity invited all immortals to a banquet, the
others carrying a fan, a lingzhi fungus and a miniature landscape in a Pantaohui, to extend their life.
tray, all amidst pine trees, rockwork and clouds, the short neck with
fruiting sprays of peach, the domed cover painted with a group of Compare a related wucai jar, Transitional Period, illustrated by
dancing boys in a fenced garden. C.J.A.Jörg, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum,
48.5cm (19 1/8in) (4). London, 1997, no.75, p.84, and a jar illustrated by M.A.Pinto and
J.P.Desroches, Chinese Export Porcelain from the Museum of
£15,000 - 25,000 CNY150,000 - 240,000 Anastácio Gonçalves, Lisbon, 1996, no.86, pp.170-171.
HK$180,000 - 290,000

清順治 五彩西王母蟠桃壽宴紋蓋罐一對

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