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PROPERTY FROM A PROMINENT PRIVATE alternating shaped cartouches enclosing oral The Complete Collection of Treasures of the
COLLECTION sprays and orets reserved on a diaper ground Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with
at the shoulder, the neck painted with a diaper Underglaze Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, pl. 183,
A LARGE BLUE AND WHITE border and the second in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts,
‘WINDSWEPT’ JAR Height 15⅛ in., 38.3 cm Tokyo, illustrated in Gen Min no tōji [Yuan and
MING DYNASTY, MID-15TH Ming ceramics], Idemitsu Art Gallery, Tokyo,
CENTURY PROVENANCE 1977, cat. no. 43. Further guan painted with the
same subject include one sold in our London
sturdily potted, the baluster body rising from Sotheby’s London, 14th November 2001, lot 99. rooms, 15th December 1981, lot 185; another sold
a slightly splayed foot to a short tapered neck at Christie’s New York, 24th March 2004, lot 175,
and rolled rim, skilfully painted in deep tones The present guan jar belongs to a group of large and a third sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 8th
of underglaze blue in the ‘windswept’ style with blue and white jars and meiping decorated in April 2007, lot 845.
three groupings of gures, one depicting two the painterly ‘windswept’ style with gures in
scholars playing weiqi, observed by an Immortal, landscape and garden setting after traditional $ 40,000-60,000
possibly Dong Wang Gong, bearing a ruyi scepter, literature and drama. The panoramic landscape
another of Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the is comparable to landscape paintings of the early 2001 11 14 99
West, wearing long owing robes and holding a Ming period, and the continuity of the scene is
basket of peaches, anked by female attendants, achieved by a line of curled clouds in the sky of
and a third of an immortal accompanied by two the main register of decoration.
attendants, one bearing a wrapped qin, together
with a spotted deer grasping a lingzhi sprig, each Compare two jars similarly painted with an
scene framed by wispy clouds, all set between a Immortal observing a game of weiqi, but
band of upright lappets and a broad register of
anked by the Eight Daoist Immortals, the rst
in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in
IMPORTANT CHINESE ART 79
