Page 51 - MARCHANT-Kangxi-Famille-Verte-FINAL

十 八
18. Chinese porcelain famille verte cylindrical brushpot, bitong, painted with a smiling figure of Liu Hai crouching on a carpet with
his hands raised beside his three-legged toad, open box of jewels, a sceptre and a tied group of scrolls and books in a continuous
海 戲 蟾 圖 五 筒 劉 彩 筆 landscape with rockwork and chrysanthemum flower sprays, all beneath an iron-red moon and two bats in flight, the reverse with
a fourteen-character poem, signature and seals. The recessed base glazed white with wide unglazed band.
5 inches, 12.7 cm high.
Kangxi, circa 1700.

• Formerly in an old French collection.
• The poem translates as “The space between sky and earth is endless, so is the distance between past and present”,
signed Jing An, round seal ban shan (half mountain), square seal mushi ju (bamboo and rock retreat).
• A famille verte brushpot with the same square seal is illustrated by Wang Qingzheng in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the
康 清 熙 Shanghai Museum Collection, no. 111, pp. 166-167; another, was exhibited by Sotheby’s, New York in their exhibition of
Embracing Classic Chinese Culture, Kangxi Porcelain from the Jie Rui Tang Collection, March 2014, no. 12, p. 31, where the
author comments that these seals were favourite studio names of Qing scholars and can be found on several porcelains of the
period, some of them dated and ranging from 1690 to 1712. It is supposed that these were most likely the names of private
kilns; another, with the same square seal and dated to 1709 is illustrated by Albert Le Bonheur and Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt
in The Worlds Great Collections, Oriental Ceramics, Vol. 7, Musée National des Arts Asiatiques, Guimet, Paris, colour pl. 36,
p. 161; a further brushpot of similar size again with the same square seal was included by Marchant in their catalogue of
Recent Acquisitions, 2006, no. 16, pp. 32-33.
• Liu Hai is a figure from Daoist legend. He befriended a three-legged toad who had the magical power to transport him
anywhere he wished to go, and the toad was tempted to return to him with a string of cash or gold. Although the story is
legend he was also believed to have been a 10th Century Minister of State.

50 51

P. 50 P. 51