Page 99 - 2019 October Important Chinese Ceramics Sotheby's Hong Kong

hese delicately painted bowls brim with auspicious messages and evidence the Yongzheng Emperor’s (r. 1723-1735) penchant
for portents of good fortune. Ripe peaches evoke the peach orchard of Xiwangmu, Queen Mother of the West, and the shou
T character inscribed on their interior creates the wish tuanshou (may you have longevity and completeness). Confronting red bats
divide the fruit sprays and further convey the wish for blessings and longevity, making these bowls ideal birthday gifts.

Bowls painted with this design in the subtle doucai palette are unusual, although a closely related bowl was sold in these rooms, 27th
April 1999, lot 426; another was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 13th November 1987, lot 485; and a third was sold at Christie’s London,
15th July 1981, lot 17.
A similar design of fruiting peach sprays inscribed with shou characters is also found painted in blue and white, such as a Yongzheng
mark and period bowl, in the National Museum of China, Beijing, included in the exhibition La Splendeur du Feu, Centre Culturel de
Chine, Paris, 2004, cat. no. 25.
The interior of this bowl is painted with the popular motif of the Seventh Trial of Zhao Sheng, a disciple of the Han dynasty (206
BC-AD 220) Daoist master Zhang Daoling, founder of the influential Way of the Celestial Masters school. Zhao was the only disciple
of Master Zhang to have successfully obtained peaches from a tree growing sideways on a steep cliff. Whilst the rendition of this story
on the present bowl excludes the figure, it retains the depiction of a lofty cliff overlooking a deep ravine with the peach tree emerging
sideways.

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