Page 171 - Sotheby's Asia Week March 2024 Chinee Art

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A LARGE AND RARE UNDERGLAZE-BLUE AND 清康熙初 青花釉裏紅蝶戀花圖盆
COPPER-RED ‘BUTTERFLY AND FLOWER’
BASIN, QING DYNASTY, EARLY KANGXI
PERIOD 來源：
馬錢特，倫敦，1985年5月28日
Diameter 14¼ in., 36.1 cm
Julia 及 John Curtis 伉儷收藏
PROVENANCE 紐約佳士得2015年3月16日，編號3580
Marchant, London, 28th May 1985.
Collection of Julia and John Curtis. 展覽：
Christie’s New York, 16th March 2015, lot 3580. 《康熙青花釉裏紅》，馬錢特，倫敦，2016年，編
號2
EXHIBITED
Kangxi Underglaze Blue and Copper-Red, Marchant, London,
2016, cat. no. 2.
Charmingly depicting a praying mantis on rockwork beneath
branches of prunus with a butterfly in flight to the left, the
present basin is rare on account of its handsome form and
its masterfully painted nature scene. An exemplary example
of its kind, the basin represents the height of ceramic
production at the kilns during the early Kangxi period, where
they were able to fire large, heavily potted ceramics of this
kind as well as skillfully manipulate the cobalt and copper-
oxide pigment to fire vibrant blues and bright reds as seen
on the present basin.
Only a few of these large basins appear to be recorded
and amongst the few, two are dated by inscription with a
Zhonghe tang hall mark. See a closely related basin, with
a similarly decorated rim and cavetto as well as the same
channeled foot, but decorated with a figural scene to the
interior, in the British Museum, London (accession no.
PDF653), and included in Rosemary Scott, Elegant Form
and Harmonious Decoration: Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen
Porcelain, London, 1992, pl. 110. The base of the basin is
inscribed with a dated Zhonghe tang hall mark, translating
to ‘made in the xinhai year of the Kangxi reign for the
Zhonghe hall’, corresponding to the year 1671. Another dated
example, formerly in the S. Winkworth Collection, is now in
the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and illustrated in
Katherine Butler and Theresa Canepa, Leaping the Dragon
Gate. The Sir Michael Butler Collection of Seventeenth-
Century Chinese Porcelain, London, 2021, p. 418. Decorated
with a scene from the Romance of the Western Chamber, the
cavetto and rim are again similarly decorated with the base
bearing the same inscription as the British Museum basin.
Another basin, unmarked and decorated to the interior with
a ‘Master of the Rocks’-style landscape scene, is in the Sir
Michael Butler Collection, illustrated in ibid., pp 416-417.
⊖ $ 60,000-80,000

338 SOTHEBY’S COMPLETE CATALOGUING AVAILABLE AT SOTHEBYS.COM/N11410 339