Page 58 - Sothebys HK Dragon Emperor April 2024

ELEGANCE OF CHENGHUA IMPERIAL
PORCELAIN PAINTING

Dragons, as mythical animals, leave artists in theory total mature style of decoration and the highest quality, by
freedom of interpretation, but in China, their physique has far. The square reign mark is found on the most exquisite
always been quite strictly defined. The various species that Chenghua pieces, particularly on doucai porcelains and
exist, are clearly differentiated and the present creatures, copies of Song Ru and guan wares.
with only two legs, a small body and a dramatic scrolling Only two complete companion pieces to the present bowl
tail, are kui (or xiangcao, ‘sweet grass’) dragons. Kui are the appear to be recorded, one in the Palace Museum, Taipei,
dragons associated with Tibetan Buddhist contexts and are illustrated in Chenghua ciqi tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the
depicted in Buddhist architecture and on objects used in Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, 1465-
Buddhist ceremonies. They have developed from the Indian 1487, Palace Museum, Taipei, 2003, no. 18; the other in
makara, a water-guardian spirit used particularly as an the Shanghai Museum, published in Lu Minghua, Shanghai
architectural element to protect gateways. In Tibet, makaras Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies of the Shanghai
formed an integral part of arch-like structures – derived Museum Collections : A Series of Monographs. Mingdai
from the Indian torana gateways – that were used to frame guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007,
Buddhist figures both in three- and two-dimensional images. no. 3-60. A partially preserved bowl, reconstructed from
As Tibetan Buddhist iconography became influential in the sherds recovered from the waste heaps of the imperial kilns
Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), such gateways incorporating a at Jingdezhen, is illustrated in Mingdai Chenghua yuyao ciqi,
pair of makaras were in China adopted for religious buildings. op.cit., vol. 1, no. 56; see also Julian Thompson, ‘Towards
An early example is the Cloud Terrace on the Juyongguan a Catalogue Raisonné of Chenghua Porcelain’, in Regina
mountain pass of the Great Wall, outside Beijing. This Krahl, ed., The Emperor’s broken china. Reconstructing
platform, which originally supported three white dagobas Chenghua porcelain, London, 1995, p. 118, where this pattern
and was completed in 1345, is carved with Tibetan Buddhist is recorded as B10.
imagery and inscribed with sutra texts. The arch-shaped In his discussion of the Shanghai companion bowl, Lu
reliefs around its passageway show the classic composition Minghua (op.cit., p. 137) has remarked upon the exquisite
that is also seen in the Ming period: a garuda between two painting manner here adopted. With outlines drawn with a
spirit figures, or apsaras, at the top, a pair of makaras with very fine brush, and filled in with a wide range of different
curling tails at the shoulders, and a sequence of animals, tones of cobalt blue, the painting manner achieves a new
placed above each other, along the jambs of the arch. level of excellence. Lu characterizes this painting style
The Chenghua Emperor was a fervent sponsor of Buddhist with the term fenshui, which can perhaps be translated as
(as well as Daoist) causes, who himself dressed as a monk ‘diluting with water’, and describes washes of different,
during Buddhist ceremonies held at court. In the second year carefully distinguished cobalt-blue tints, created by mixing
of his reign, he agreed to have a new temple built, Cirensi, the pigment with different amounts of water. Rather than
at the site of the Baoguosi in Beijing, where his mother’s being due to the haphazard variation in tone that occurs
younger brother (or cousin, according to some reports) had naturally when painting in ink – or here cobalt – of only
been made abbot. A commemorative text that the Emperor one tone, several different pigment solutions were here
wrote on the construction of this temple, preserved on a methodically employed.
stone stele that still stands in the temple grounds, attests to How these Chenghua imperial pieces, inscribed with the
his personal attention to this project. reign mark, stand out in quality becomes very clear when
Another, more important temple structure erected under comparing them with roughly contemporary porcelains
the Chenghua Emperor, in 1473, is the Zhenjuesi (‘Temple with kui dragons, but unmarked: Related, but much less
of True Awakening’), better known as Wutasi (‘Five Pagoda carefully painted kui dragons appear on the outside of an
Temple’), built in the Tibetan style with five pagodas on unmarked dish in the Palace Museum, Beijing, as well as on
top of a cubical base. The main entrance to the building is a fragmentary counterpart excavated at Jingdezhen, both
surrounded by an arch of the same composition as that on decorated with a double Vajra in the centre and attributed to
Juyongguan, with two makara dragons on either side at the the Chenghua reign, illustrated in Mingdai Chenghua yuyao
top (fig. 1). ciqi. Jingdezhen yuyao yizhi chutu yu Gugong Bowuyuan cang
According to Fang Chaoying, “More Buddhist temples seem chuanshi ciqi duibi /Imperial Porcelains from the Reign of
to have been built or rebuilt in Peking during the Ch’eng-hua Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty. A Comparison of Porcelains
and Wan-li reigns than in other periods of the Ming dynasty.” from the Imperial Kiln Site at Jingdezhen and the Imperial
(L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds, Dictionary Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2016, vol. 1, nos 25
of Ming Biography 1368 – 1644, New York and London: and 45; another variant of the kui dragon, with paws instead
Columbia University Press, 1976, vol. 1, p. 303). Buddhist of claws, also not comparable in its painting style, appears
motifs such as the Eight Buddhist Emblems, double Vajra in the centre and around the outside of a stem bowl in the
and inscriptions in the Tibetan script, are well known on Palace Museum, Beijing, also unmarked and attributed to the
Chenghua imperial porcelains and their appearance seems Chenghua reign, ibid., no. 82.
to have increased in the later years of the reign, but this On porcelain, kui dragons are known at least since the Yongle
makara-style dragon with a lotus spray in its mouth was very period, as seen on a large jar sold in these rooms, 29th
rarely depicted. Liu Xinyuan, who excavated the Chenghua April 2022, lot 5, from the collection of Joseph Lau, and on
remains at the imperial kiln site, suggested that “objects another, of Xuande mark and period, sold 2nd October 2017,
decorated with religious motifs were made in and after the lot 101. In both cases, the dragons have more distinctive
17th year of the Chenghua reign (1481), when the court was wings – which on the present bowl are reduced to small curls
consumed with religious activities” (A Legacy of Chenghua: – and the Xuande version comes with paws. Kui dragons with
Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from prominent wings and scaly fish tails appear quite frequently
Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, on Xuande and Interregnum period porcelains, where they
p. 29 Chinese, p. 70 English). are often included among groups of fanciful sea creatures,
A date in the later years of the Chenghua period is also which include winged horses, elephants, hares and fish, so
suggested by this bowl’s square reign mark. The porcelain called because they are depicted among waves, in spite
production of the Chenghua reign can be divided into three of their wings. They are all very different from the elegant
periods, of which the last is characterized by the most creatures depicted on the present bowl.
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