Page 101 - Marchant 2013 Exhibition

四 45. A Chinese imperial porcelain white biscuit carved brushpot with relief decoration of a scholar and his attendant standing beside

十 three goats in a mountainous landscape with pine and wutong trees, houses and pavilions in the distance, the reverse with an
五 eighteen-character relief poem and seal.

御 5 ¼ inches, 13.3 cm high.
製 Six-character relief sealmark of Daoguang and of the period, 1821-1850.

素
胎 • Formerly in the personal collection of Sydney Moss.
白 • Purchased from Marchant, circa 1960.
瓷 • The poem translates - Shi zai zhongxia xie yu Changjiang Zhushan ke ci xie wei Chi Shi Cheng Yang Tu, ‘Written in mid-Summer

浮 while being a guest at Changjiang Zhushan inscribed for the painting titled Turning the Stones into Goats by Shouting’.

雕

叱 “Zhushan is located in Jingdezhen, site of the Imperial kilns in Jiangxi province. The painting ‘Chi Shi Cheng Yang Tu’ takes
石 zhushan ke ci xie wei Chi Shi Cheng Yang Tu inspiration from the Daoist story included in Ge Hong’s (284-363) Shenxian zhuan
成
羊 (Biography of Immortals) of the Jin dynasty (265-420). It is a tale of a young shepherd boy called Huang Chuping, a native of
圖 Danxi, Jinhua, who at fifteen years of age mysteriously disappeared while herding a flock of sheep. His elder brother, Huang
筆 Chuqi, searched everywhere for him but without success. Forty years later, by chance, Chuqi met a Daoist priest at a market

筒 who told him that there is a shepherd in the Jinhua Mountain. This shepherd turned out to be his long-lost brother Chuping.
The two brothers were finally reunited, and Chuping explained that he followed an immortal and thereby gained immortality

清 himself. Chuqi asked about the whereabouts of his herd, upon which his brother told him that they were on the hillside in

道 front of a cave. Chuqi went to the cave but could only see white rocks amongst the shrubs and bushes. However when Chuping
光 suddenly shouted, all the white rocks turned into sheep. This confirmed to Chuqi that his brother had indeed turned into a

《 Daoist immortal. The two are known as Er Huang Jun - the two Huang immortals. The phrase ‘chi shi cheng yang’ (turning the
大
stones into goats by shouting) came to be used as an idiom for describing miraculous happenings.”

清

道

光

年

製

》

款

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