Page 32 - Sothebys Important Chinese Art 09/13/17

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A FINELY PAINTED DOUCAI ‘FIVE BATS’ A closely related dish, in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
DISH London, is illustrated in Rose Kerr, Porcelain of the Qing
YONGZHENG MARK AND PERIOD Dynasty 1644-1911, London, 1986, pl. 86; one from the
Hugh Moss collection rst sold at Christie’s New York, 15th
nely potted, the rounded sides rising from a slightly tapered September 2011, lot 1548, and again in our Hong Kong rooms,
foot, decorated in the center with ve iron-red bats uttering 7th April 2015, lot 3667; another sold in the same rooms
around a gnarled peach tree, issuing from the side of a cli 4th April 2012, lot 3181; and a pair of dishes from the E.T.
above a green sea with crested waves breaking over jagged Chow collection, also sold in those rooms, 19th May 1981,
rocks, the exterior with four fruiting sprigs each enclosing a lot 557. Another dish of this type is illustrated in Terese Tse
stylized shou character within a owerhead, alternating with Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art, San Francisco,
pairs of confronted iron-red bats, the base with a six-character 2006, p. 221, no. 7.55, where the author explains that the
reign mark in underglaze blue within double circles iconography refers to the double birthday greetings, ‘May your
Diameter 6⅛ in., 15.5 cm blessing be as deep as the Eastern Sea, and may you live to be
as old as the Southern Mountain’.
PROVENANCE
$ 60,000-80,000
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 5th November 1997, lot 1501.
1997 11 5 1501
The scene depicted on this dish represents the seventh trial
of Zhao Sheng, a disciple of the Eastern Han dynasty Celestial
Master Zhang Daoling (AD 134-156) who is credited with
founding the Way of the Celestial Masters sect of Daoism.
This theme of testing the faith of Zhao Sheng is also captured
in the famous Eastern Jin painter Gu Kaizhi’s ‘Account of
Painting the Cloud Terrace Mountain’, preserved in Zhang
Yanyuan’s Record of Famous Paintings of All the Dynasties (AD
847). Zhang Daoling told his disciples that he would reveal the
essence of the Way to those who could obtain peaches from
a peach tree growing sideways from a steep cli . Only Zhao
Sheng had the courage to carry out the task and he returned
with a peach from the tree. While the rendition of this story on
the present dish excludes the gures and how they should be
depicted in Gu Kaizhi’s instructions, it retains his description
of a lofty cli overlooking a deep ravine and the peach tree
that grows sideways from it. The additional inclusion of the

ve red bats heightens the auspiciousness of the scene while
increasing the supernatural element of the story.

30 SOTHEBY’S